Description of Methodology
Effective date: 1/1/2011
The following Description of Methodology (DOM) applies to Burst Media.
To receive Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Certification, a network or exchange must:
- Adhere to the IAB Network & Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines
- Perform an internal audit on a quarterly basis to ensure that the guidelines are consistently and completely followed; and
- Submit 2 public affidavits to the IAB annually, one from the Compliance Officer and one from the CEO, CFO or business unit head of the network or exchange
Networks and exchanges that voluntarily agree to self-certify against these guidelines are providing marketers and agencies with a standardized approach that is designed to make buying easier and to give increased control over where ads are placed. Marketers and agencies will have greater brand safety assurances that their ads will not appear next to content that they decide is inappropriate.
The following disclosure is made in connection with our self-certification and is intended to provide publishers and advertisers with an understanding of our capabilities and practices which are compliant with the IAB Network & Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines.
This document is not intended to replace our standard Terms and Conditions [LINK] or the insertion order (IO), which are contractual documents, but is intended to supplement those documents to fully disclose our practices under the IAB Network & Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines.
Acquiring Inventory
1) Burst Media (Burst) provides advertisers with various levels of inventory source level transparency. The IO between Burst and an advertiser documents the level of transparency provided for a specific advertising campaign. Dependent on the advertising contract between Burst and an advertiser, Burst provides:
(a) Full disclosure (certain site list): Burst provides the advertiser with a complete disclosure of all websites prior to running impressions (at least specifying the domain name) where ads may run. This list contains a comprehensive list of websites where the advertiser may run. The advertiser will not necessarily run on all sites listed, but the advertiser will not run on any sites other than those listed. The full site list will be attached to the IO if required by the advertiser.
(b) Partial disclosure (representative site list): Burst provides the advertiser with a list of some of the sites where ads will run. This list will contain a representative list of websites where the advertiser will run. The advertiser may run on sites other than those listed but the advertiser will not necessarily run on all sites listed. The partial site list will be attached to the IO if required by the advertiser.
2) All ads for a specific buy will run on publishers that Burst has a direct relationship with. A direct relationship is where Burst has a contractual agreement to acquire inventory directly from the publisher or an authorized publisher agent (APA).
3) Burst will disclose in the insertion order, if required by the advertiser, information about the type of content surrounding its inventory. Burst will provide information on the following characteristics:
(a) The presence of user-generated content (UGC)
(b) Burt requires all websites in its networks to have a current, active and publicly stated privacy policy
(c) Burst’s site eligibility requirements exclude sites with the following content from joining its networks; unmoderated UGC, extreme graphic/explicit violence, pornography, profane content and hate content.
(d) For each agreement, Burst will disclose the ad positioning if required in the IO. The ad positioning of each placement will be identified as either above the fold or below the fold if required by the advertiser and this will be noted in the insertion order.
(e) For each agreement, Burst will provide ad tag descriptors if required in the IO for the following:
i. Expandable creative
ii. Rich media properties
iii. Behavior within the creative (i.e. Host- or user-initiated)
(f) For each agreement, Burst will disclose if video advertising is accepted if required in the IO:
i. Video must include audio controls and default to audio off
Contextual Taxonomy and Targeting
1) Burst complies with Tiers 1 & 2 of the IAB Contextual Taxonomy.
2) For each agreement, Burst will disclose the contextual targeting levels if required in the IO. Contextual targeting levels include the following:
(a) Site Level: targeting to endemic sites where the majority of the content is on a specific topic can be targeted at site level.
(b) Site Section Level: subsections of sites are classified into subordinate categories.
(c) None (Not targeting content but targeting users.)
Inventory Vetting
Every publisher with whom we have a direct relationship goes through an inventory vetting process that establishes the following:
1) Rating system for website content. The site rating is determined when the site first joins our networks. Additional procedures are performed on a periodic basis to ensure that the site ratings stay current and publishers are also reviewed on a quarterly basis as part of our internal audit. The rating system for website content is based on the following broad groupings:
(a) All Audiences: defined as appropriate for all segments of the general public (all of the following must apply): no profanity, sexual content, violence depictions of alcohol, tobacco, weapons, gambling or drug use.
(b) Everyone Over 12 years: defined as may contain material considered inappropriate for young children. Any of the following may be present: implicit references to vulgar language, kissing, violence to animated characters, journalistic references to alcohol, tobacco, weapons, gambling, or drug use.
(c) Mature Audiences: defined as may contain material suitable only for mature audiences. Any of the following may be present: profanity, provocative images, nudity, violence to human beings or animals, depictions of alcohol, tobacco, weapons, gambling or drug use, etc.
2) Burst’s website eligibility requirements exclude websites from joining our networks that:
(a) Contain any adult, nudity, sexually explicit, or mature content, use explicit language, or link to adult or sexually explicit content.
(b) Contain UGC that is not moderated.
(c) Infringe on any material protected by copyright.
(d) Distribute or promote spyware or malware.
(e) Contain racial, ethnic, political or hate mongering.
(f) Contain investment advice, or money-making opportunities not permitted under law.
(g) Contain gratuitous displays of violence or profanity.
(h) Contain material that defames, abuses, or threatens physical harm.
(i) Contain promotion of illegal substances or activities, such as online gambling, how to build a bomb, counterfeit money, etc.
(j) Contain email or chat services provided to users.
(k) Contain forum pages that are not moderated.
(l) Contain pages/sites which provide free hosting, community, or network services.
(m) Use any methods to falsely inflate the number of ad views or clicks.
(n) Allow timed rotation or auto refresh advertising.
Data Disclosure
1) Burst reassures advertisers and agencies that the data collected for targeting purposes on their campaign has been done so in a transparent manner with the publisher's full permission. For off-site behavioral targeting of advertisers, Burst has contractual agreements with publishers in which consent is explicitly given to aggregate behavioral data for the purposes of using this information for behavioral targeting of advertisers off the publisher’s site.
2) If we use third-party data from a data aggregator for targeting, we will make available to the advertiser a list of data aggregators that may be used for their campaign but not specific to each campaign. Burst is a member in good standing of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) and will only work with NAI Approved 3rd Party Data aggregators. Additionally in those instances when Burst is using third-party data we will utilize Evidon InForm™. Evidon Inform is a service that gives consumers more transparency into and control over how their information is used online, including the ability to opt out of further targeting.
Compliance
To maintain our self-certification through compliance with the IAB Guidelines, a quarterly internal audit is conducted by our Compliance Officer. The Compliance Officer is a senior manager who is in an objective role, outside the influence of sales. Internal audits ensure that:
1) The guidelines are consistently and completely followed.
2) That error situations are detected in a timely fashion.
3) That appropriate corrective measures are taken in a timely fashion.
4) Internal audits also include a risk analysis of certain control functions to assess how much testing should be conducted to validate adherence.
5) Internal audits include actual testing of data (sites/pages/ads/logs), both statistically and judgmentally based, to validate that the existing control structure is effective.
On an annual basis, both our Compliance Officer and our CEO file an affidavit with the IAB attesting to the following:
1) That quarterly internal audits have been conducted.
2) That inventory is accurately labeled in accordance with established content framework among four criteria:
(a) Source level transparency
(b) Source relationship transparency
(c) Site/content level transparency
(d) Placement details transparency
3) That content is accurately categorized in accordance with Tiers 1 & 2 of the IAB Contextual Taxonomy, and that we specify the depth (e.g., site level vs. page level) of categorization.
4) That content is accurately labeled in accordance with established guidelines.
5) That we gain publisher consent from publisher partners who are contributing data for off-site behavioral targeting and we make available a list of
Third-party Data aggregators to advertisers when using Third-party data.
If you have any concerns regarding compliance, please send an email to our Compliance Officer at compliance@burstmedia.com. Alternatively, you can submit a Buyer Complaint Form to the IAB. The IAB Network & Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines can be downloaded at http://www.iab.net/media/file/NE-QA-Guidelines-Final-Release-0610.pdf (refer to page 32 for the Buyer Complaint Form).
Data Adjustment
adConductor utilizes multiple methods to ensure the accuracy of click counts. Checks are made for repeated and stale clicks, and for clicks from automated programs, such as spiders and bots. The checks are performed both when the clicks occur and during the summarization process. Clicks determined to be inauthentic are excluded from reporting and are advertisers are not charged for them. Additional analysis is performed to determine the source and cause of inauthentic clicks, which can lead to the suspension of offending publisher sites and blocking of users and IP addresses.
“Uniques” are determined by summing distinct views and clicks by user, adcode, campaign, package, creative and ad server. The user is identified by the “TID” value stored in the browser cookie, if available, otherwise the combination of the user’s IP address, and browser user agent and language is used.
This method of counting uniques means that if a user views the same campaign creative on a different adcode, or on the same adcode, but a different ad server, the view will be counted as an additional “unique”. Also, in the absence of a TID, if the user’s IP address changes, additional views or clicks on the same adcode, campaign creative and ad server would be counted as an additional unique. Conversely, in the absence of a TID, if multiple users from the same IP address having the same browser and language views or clicks on the same adcode, campaign creative and ad server they would be counted as a single unique.