Pitfall 5
Poor pacing
Unless otherwise specified, advertisers have the right to expect a reasonably balanced delivery schedule. Surprisingly often, this does not happen. Perhaps the publisher does not have enough inventory for the entire run of the campaign, or it made a mistake by not delivering enough inventory early in the campaign, and the publisher doesn't catch the mistake until late in the campaign. It may dump excessive impressions during the last few days of the campaign (see the chart below). These impressions are often delivered off-hours and on less-than-desirable sites or page locations.
In our findings, poor pacing is quite common, found in a little over one-third of campaigns. To reduce the impact of poor pacing, make sure that your contract and your insertion order specifies your delivery expectations. The new IAB and 4A Standard Terms and Conditions includes a brief paragraph requiring balanced delivery. This is a minimum, and you might want to include more-explicit requirements and penalties. It is also important to catch poor pacing early in a campaign, something that an ad verification service should alert you to.
