Perfect example of why you should take TOTAL control over your ad space

Picture this, a big company with a respected brand contacts you and gives does a nice sales pitch about how they can get you a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of N dollars and how they can make you more money from your ad space. Anyone with a large website has gotten this pitch before – we get it here at BSA from other networks looking to buy our unsold inventory (I will write more on this later). The unsold inventory dilemma for publishers is a tough decision. Do you leave a little money on the table in spirit of high quality or do you take a few extra bucks and say (in most cases) “screw you” to your visitors?

The problem here is that you give up control to the ad network and all of a sudden the ads put on your site are at THEIR discretion and not yours. If you are a publisher who does not control 100% of the ads on your site, do you know what ads are being shown to your visitors right now?

We all have stuff that slips through the cracks from time to time – I just removed an ad from a popular site of ours that slipped through the cracks. But today, this ad I saw was really really bad. Check it out, it’s ridiculous. I intentionally cropped out the logo from the website, because I’m not trying to knock on them. The website is 100% web design related. What is disturbing about this is that the ads are being served up by FOX Networks (second screenshot, url highlighted) which you would think would have some higher quality guidelines. The offer might be legit, who knows, but don’t allow this type of creative. This type of creative is what makes people look the other way when they hear the words “ad network”.

You can’t see from the screenshots, but the ad blinks. Come on FOX, why would you even sell something like this and how on earth would you determine that this ad is a good fit for a design related site? Publishers, please, take control of your ad space.