Brand safety
and fraud prevention policy

MiQ is fully committed to providing brands with the maximum level of brand safety. MiQ is an IAB Gold Standard Certified Buyer and is certified by TAG Against Fraud and for Brand Safety.

Specifically, MiQ use leading independently certified content verification tools and proprietary technology to implement pre and post bid solutions, ensuring maximum brand safety levels and reducing fraud and piracy risk.

Brand safety policies

Pre-bid –

1. DSP audited Inventory –
MiQ maintains a strict set of criteria for excluding unacceptable inventory in partnership with operated DSPs. Any inventory that we detect as falling within these criteria will be added to our DSP exclusion lists. Inventory is human audited by the DSP, or by inventory providers. Audits are conducted regularly to ensure validation of new domains or behavior changes to existing domains.

2. Inventory categorization standards –

MiQ excludes by default environments categorized as toolbar, plug-ins or extensions, incentivised clicks and contextual nudity. In keeping with listed best practices MiQ does not serve upon non-audited inventory sources, where categories cannot be determined.

3. Seller inclusion lists –

MiQ enforces a strict inclusion list of exchanges and publishers. Inclusion lists are scored based upon inventory quality and integrity. Inclusion lists have been curated from 8+ years of data and monthly ongoing human and data led audits.

4. Domain exclusion lists –

Domain exclusion lists are rigorously enforced at MiQ, and again by default are excluded from all campaigns. Domain exclusion lists have been created from 8+ years of data mining and human audits, these continue to be refreshed on a weekly cadence. MiQ accommodates advertiser and / or agency exclusion lists – these are updated weekly. This includes but is not limited to GroupM, Publicis, OMD global exclusion lists.

5. 3rd party ad verification –

MiQ have close partnerships with MRC accredited internet services; AppNexus, Google, Integral Ad Science, Comscore, Digital Envoy, Adloox, Moat, DoubleVerify among others. Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify specifically are used to determine and block pre-bid inventory that is deemed suspicious or consistent with adult, gambling, download, drug, nudity, alcohol, hate speech, offensive language content. Furthermore, sophisticated traffic suspected of botnet traffic or viewability interference is also blocked to provide additional pre-bid blocking parameters. Inventory that is unrateable is blocked, it is understood that inventory that is unrateable may be more liable to non-compliance.

6. Semantic / keyword blocking –

MiQ partners with Grapeshot (Oracle) to use advanced keyword technology to block and verify contextual attributes. By default, sensitive attributes are blocked. MiQ use Boolean logic to block when either keyword OR ad verification partner deems an impression unsuitable, not in an AND rule i.e. when both match. The combination of keyword and ad verification techniques prevents mismatch, providing a robust understanding of the nature of a page prior to purchase.

7. Log-level integrations –

MiQ have log-level integrations with Integral Ad Science, Moat, comScore and Grapeshot, ingesting raw impression feed data. This data is connected to AiQ and DSP feeds, to facilitate actionable outcomes within DSP targeting. Custom solutions for advertisers and / or agencies can be built seamlessly.

8. Inventory performance index –

MiQ categorizes sellers, publishers and domains based on the following metrics i.e. performance (CPA, CPC, CTR, CVR), consistency, viewability, ad clutter, ad collision etc. Scores are associated to each seller, publisher and domain which is in turn applied to DSP campaign setup. Layering historical campaign performance data provides further brand safety / fraud detection.

9. IP fraud prevention –

MiQ as well as working with leading 3rd parties in the industry, are again providing a proprietary solution to IP fraud, excluding on average 1-2M+ daily IPs in real-time. This by default is applied to all campaigns. This in its simplest form prevents geo mismatches between ad servers, blocks cloud hosting IPs etc. This prevents fraud that cannot easily be identified via inventory analysis alone, an IP safety layer is therefoe critical to ensure maximum brand safety standards.

Post-bid –

1. 3rd party ad verification –

Upon bid submission and a winning auction (but before the ad has rendered) the text, images and links of the page are scanned and scored on a level of brand safety. By default, MiQ permit ad rendering to occur only if the content of the page has the maximum level of brand safety and no additional information about the content of the page has any conflict with mandatory pre-bid standards.

2. Daily refinement –

All levels of inventory are vetted on a post-bid nature to improve pre-bid setup. This is a continuous cycle and maintained via data scientists and automated methodology.

Learn –> Refine –> Action –> Learn –> Refine –> Action

Bespoke –

Client best practices –

MiQ can ingest agency and / or advertiser best practices. Seamlessly applying domain, keyword, IP, geo exclusion lists to complement existing MiQ protocol.

Takedown Policy –

Should a client want to stop an ad campaign or have any brand safety related queries, MiQ will guarantee activity be paused and queried within 24 hours but will endeavor to do this instantly. Clients should email notice to your account manager or the alias brandsafety@miqdigital.com.

The contractual consequences of not taking down an ad in accordance with MiQ‘s Takedown policy are subject to the terms of each individual Insertion Order negotiated with each Buyer.

Anti-Piracy Policies

MiQ employs a range of measures to prevent appearing alongside inappropriate or pirated content across our programmatic media buying. These range from proprietary MiQ solutions to Content Verification (CV) & Anti-Piracy (AP) tools provided through our partnerships with third party verification vendors.

MiQ mandates that CV & AP tools provided by vendors holding the TAG Brand Safety Certified Seal and the TAG Certified Against Piracy Seal are applied across all applicable activity.

MiQ primary vendors include Integral Ad Science (IAS) and DoubleVerify who both hold the TAG Brand Safety Certified Seal and TAG Certified Against Piracy Seal across their services.

Through these measures, MiQ achieves a brand safety floor across all applicable activity by avoiding content across the eleven sensitive topics in Tier 1 of the IAB Tech Lab Content Taxonomy 3.0:

– Arms & Ammunition
– Crime & Harmful acts to individuals and Society and Human Right Violations
– Death, Injury, or Military Conflict
– Online piracy
– Hate speech & acts of aggression
– Obscenity and Profanity
– Illegal Drugs/Tobacco/eCigarettes/ Vaping/Alcohol
– Spam or Harmful Content
– Terrorism
– Sensitive Social Issues

In addition to this brand safety floor, MiQ works with clients where requested to define a brand suitability profile based on additional categorisation of inventory. This brand suitability profile is then implemented through domain & app inclusion lists, dynamic content filtering & blocking provided by third party verification vendors as well as keyword & semantic targeting or filtering.

MiQ also receives log level data across activity where our IAS monitoring pixel is present which which provides impression level Brand Risk & Piracy analysis. This data is used to supplement decisioning for MiQ’s proprietary pre bid filtering and enhance overall protection.