Adcolony - TFAQs

The questions fall under three different categories:

• Pricing

• Placement

• Data

Pricing

What is your business model and how do you make money?
AdColony sells advertising in a variety of ways including CPM, CPI and CPCV (Cost Per Completed View).

Can you outline the full details of the agreement on a booking form / contract?
Yes - we specify volumes, rates, dates, placements on an IO. By accepting our IO's we ask clients to agree to the Terms & Conditions as set out by the IAB Standard Terms & Conditions V3.0. The Standard Terms are available here. Our DTSG Policy Statements and Brand Protection Policy are available here.

Will you share who your trading partners are?
AdColony operates our own SDK which app developers integrate directly into their apps to help them monetise with mobile video.

Placement

Do you own the inventory you sell?
AdColony operates our own SDK which app developers integrate directly into their apps to help them monetise with mobile video.

If you don’t own your own inventory then how do you access inventory and which platforms do you use?
Via our own SDK.

Do you specify your media placements and positions?
AdColony specialises exclusively in high-quality, full-screen video ads within mobile app environments. Placements are always detailed to clients. AdColony's SDK, which powers the experience, can also be integrated as interstitial ads and have ads play pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll. Publishers can also integrate our SDK as a user-initiated/rewarded experience where users opt in to watch a video ad and are rewarded with virtual currency upon video complete.

What insights do you provide back to advertisers?
From our proprietary dashboard we can provide high level performance reporting (CTR, VCR, Engagement Rate) at a placement and creative level.

Does the inventory you own or access include UGC content?
No.

What brand safety measures do you use?
AdColony is committed to providing outstanding customer service and brand safety for our Clients and Publishers. We are dedicated to providing complete transparency and control over how brands appear around Publisher content. To achieve this, we set out here our brand protection policy and processes for all campaigns run across our network and our use of campaign whitelists according to your instructions. AdColony operates with premium inventory on identified Publishers containing appropriate content and offers ad placements across a secure list of premium, vetted mobile websites and apps. We also work with premium publisher partners, with established reputations, grounded in strong brand values, credibility, and trust. We will run campaigns across our network of brand-safe premium sites in conjunction with our internal blacklist criteria and with any blacklist or whitelist requested by the advertiser or their agency. Additionally, when requested, we will remove advertising from any url upon instructions from the advertiser or their agency.

OUR BRAND PROTECTION & BLACKLIST POLICY:

AdColony operates a blacklist policy and will not serve any advertisements to any sites containing the following generic categories including but not limited to : adult content, alcohol, hate speech, offensive language, violence, illegal drugs, illegal downloads, adware/malware.

In addition, if sites are identified as being inappropriate whilst not falling into the identified categories they will be added to a blacklist to be supplied to any supplier or inventory.Any blacklist or whitelist supplied by an advertiser or their agency will be used in addition to AdColony blacklist or whitelist for use on specified campaigns or for any stated period. All the information can be found on the privacy policy here. We additionally have partnerships with Grapeshot, DoubleVerify and IAS that allow us to make in-flight optimisations based on client brand safety needs.

Which industry standards have you been certified against?
In addition to the IAB UK’s Gold Standard 1.0, AdColony has also joined the Coalition for Better Ads, been certified for Security and Brand Safety by JICWEBS and DTSG, been granted independent certification by the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), is a founding member of the Coalition Against Ad Fraud, and is the first mobile ad network with full compatibility for MOAT, IAS, and DoubleVerify standards verification metrics.

Do you have a policy in place for ad-misplacement?
In the event of a client’s advertisement appearing on a mobile website or mobile application that the client deems inappropriate or unsuitable, AdColony will make every effort to take down the advertisement as soon as possible or within the timescales specified in individual terms and conditions and, if requested, will add that site to our blacklist to be used for any future campaigns for that client. Any incidents of ad misplacement identified by agencies, Clients, or Publishers can be notified to [email protected] We would be grateful if you could provide as much information as possible including the date, time and app or Website on which you saw the ad along with the brand that was being advertised and the reason why you believe it was misplaced. Ideally, we can most effectively respond if you provide a screenshot or video of the offending or misplaced ad.The contractual consequences of not taking down an ad in accordance with this policy are evaluated and agreed with the buyer on a case by case basis.

Are you happy to share your optimisation tactics?
As well as working with our customer service teams, clients can access a wealth of information/reports that can help inform their optimisation approach.

Data

Under GDPR what legal basis are you providing your services under?
AdColony operates under the basis of Legitimate Interest.

If consent is the mechanism then can you prove how you obtained it?
Yes, consumers opt in to receive interest-based advertisements from AdColony through the Terms and Conditions that are provided by our publisher partners. Users agree to these terms upon installing and using the apps in our network.

Are you using the IAB Framework?
Yes.

What other 3rd party data partners require consent for your business to deliver its service?
Any third party measurement or data (targeting) partner that AdColony works with requires that consent be provided by their respective consumers in order for those audiences to be leveraged for targeting or measurement. As controllers of their own data, those respective partners are responsible for omitting consumers who have opted out from their proprietary data pools.

What do you do with data you obtain from advertiser’s campaigns or data tags?
AdColony collects personal data in the course of our business. The definitions of personal data vary depending on the laws where you are located. For example, in the European Union (EU), personal data is defined broadly, and would include PII and Pseudonymous Identifiers. You can always opt not to disclose certain data to us, but keep in mind all of the data we collect is needed to take advantage of some features of the Websites or to help us find the most interesting and relevant advertising messages to share with you while you are using apps developed by our Publishers. You may request deletion of your data using one of the online forms below. More information can be found on the privacy policy here.

Are advertisers permitted to appoint their own 3rd party partners for verification and measurement?
Yes.

Will you provide a link to your privacy and data policies?
Can be found here.

Will you share how you build audience, contextual and targeting segments?
We depend on GDPR-compliant third party data providers to help enrich the device IDs seen across AdColony's platform with characteristics for targeting. For this to happen, our third party data partners port the full list of anonymized device IDs that fall under a specific audience segment over to a secure AdColony-side S3 bucket. From there, AdColony matches those anonymized device IDs to the devices seen across our network for targeting.

To find out which other companies have completed the FAQs, please visit our members directory here. 

Please note the answers given are self-declared and are not verified by IAB UK or independently audited, unlike under industry-owned programmes such as JICWEBS. To view the latest JICWEBS Certifications, visit https://jicwebs.org/certification-process/signatories/