» AdSafe released its state of the industry report on the display market. I have to disclose that the findings of this report are very much US-centric - but still there are some useful stats for European ad traders. The volume of inventory going through automated channels continues to rise: 49% of US display traffic was served via Ad Exchanges, Real-Time-Bidding Platforms and DSPs, a rise of 2% on last quarter's figure. This suggest that advertisers continue to shift spend through automated channels - again it must be pointed out that Adsafe figures are based on their own data from customers. The Adsafe indices though suggest that ad exchange inventory remained the highest risk for advertisers - in terms of brand safety.

The key findings for this quarter are listed below. If you want to know how the indices works, have a quick browse through Adsafe's ratings guide.

- Highest Risk Inventory is served via Ad Exchanges. 16.9% of inventory served by Ad Exchanges was High Risk for advertising (with an AdSafe Rating below 250), 6.3% of inventory served via Ad Networks was High Risk and 3.8% directly via Publishers was High Risk.

- Inventory transparency is the lowest on Ad Exchanges. Ad Exchanges served 64.4% IAB Category I inventory (with full transparency regarding referring URL), Ad Networks served 82.6% and Publishers directly served 97.4%.

- Publishers follow geo-targeting requirements more than any other buying channel. 1.9% of Publisher inventory fell outside of geo-targeting requirements while 3.9% of Ad Exchange inventory and 4.3% of Ad Network inventory fell outside of geo- targeting requirements.

» IASH, the UK's rating agency for ad network inventory, is currently testing a number of ad verification vendors. Eight vendors have submitted applications to be tested. Each supplier is being invited to undergo testing that will be independently verified by ABCe. The results will be released later in the year. IASH will then recommend accredited vendors to its members. Given the number of ad verification offerings on the market, it might be good to get some direction from an industry body. My only problem with this is that it might handicap new innovators in the space in terms of cost and resource. I'd be curious how much vendors will have to pay to get tested and how resource-heavy is the application process? Getting ad net inventory IASH approved requires a fair chunk of money and the process is far from seamless. My other gripe about all this is that if these vendors are able to do real-time ad verification why would they need to be audited by IASH? I am assuming here that IASH will continue to test these offerings on an ongoing basis. It is positive step for the industry in the short term, but ad nets and the industry should be testing all vendors with or without the IASH seal of approval.