AppNexus announced yesterday that will start to refund advertisers that bought invalid traffic on their platform, starting on March 31. AppNexus “is implementing new policies to streamline the refund process for buyers who have purchased invalid traffic.”
Buyside clients who have purchased nonhuman traffic can submit a claim to AppNexus Business Support through the Customer Support Portal. The claim must be submitted within 30 calendar days of the incident, and the claim must include reporting from an approved third-party verification service. At the moment, the approved third-party verification services are comScore, DBM (DSP), DoubleVerify, and IAS.
On the claim, buyers need to detail the Placement ID, Seller member ID , Campaign ID , Line item ID , Total imps , Number of invalid imps , % of invalid imps , and Reporting must be at a daily level .
This policy covers open RTB and does not apply to Deals. Sellers involved with invalid traffic will be notified by email by the AppNexus team. The amount of the credit will then be withheld from the seller’s next pay cycle. Sellers can see this itemized in their seller statement.
Last year, Doubleclick Bid Manager (DBM) started also to refund advertisers on invalid traffic, but on DBM is an automatic process, without claims from third-party verification services like IAS.