In programmatic, there are still blind spots that need to be reviewed, especially when it comes to payouts. This is the case of discrepancy data.
With the sheer amount of #dTech players and of various tools to calculate analytics data, discrepancies are still an issue and a real nightmare for billing.
Discrepancies affect pubs and advertisers equally, and there are two main types:
1. BETWEEN ADTECH VENDORS
When optimizing, pubs should always consider the connection between tech systems, which can cause discrepancies – eg: it is important to regularly compare the ad requests sent from the ad server to the ad requests reported in the SSPs.
Discrepancies can be between 2 and 10% and API connection would be a preferable solution to reduce them, but the integration process is time consuming and requires resources and approval from the AdTech used.
2. BETWEEN AD SERVERS
As the creative is served by ad tags, the ad delivery is usually tracked by:
– The publisher via ad server
and
– The 3rd party vendor via another ad server used to traffic the ads.
The difference between the two sets of numbers cause the discrepancy.
Generally, it happens because pubs calculate impressions based on ad requests generated while advertisers are based on ads delivered.
