The sky is falling in ad land thanks to a combination of threats including non-human traffic, the practice in which nefarious publisher sites game ad views to reap revenue. But don't paint all publishers with the same brush, says New York Times ad products SVP Michael Zimbalist.
He notes a recent Association of National Advertising study that found 11% of online display ad impressions were generated by fake views. But Zimbalist took the ANA's study one step further.
"We (the DCN) replicated that study," he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. "In the premium sites ... less than 2% of all display impressions was non-human.
"People are going to great lengths to figure out how to rid the ecosystem of fraudulent traffic. There's a very simple way - it's (to) buy brand names you can trust. Buy direct, not through intermediaries."
Zimbalist serves as chairman of the Digital Content Next, DCN, previously known as the Online Publishers' Association.
We interviewed him at Media Future Conversations 2015: Unblocked - Valuing Human Attention In A Content-Driven World, an event presented by true[X] in association with Beet.TV Please find more event videos here.
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