Sometimes you may see a difference between the impression counts reported by Broadstreet and those reported by third party systems, especially in the case of third-party / HTML ads.
Broadstreet ad tags deliver to the page first, at which point the third party ad or campaign is invoked. Broadstreet considers this a delivery, but it’s up to the third party system to actually deliver the ad and track its own delivery.
For third party systems with “slow” delivery times, this provides an opportunity for a user to leave the page before the third party ad system finally delivers its creative.
In practice, the difference between two systems typically amounts to less than 10% of impressions delivers. In most cases, less than 5%.
In some cases, the third party system may not deliver the ad. This usually takes place when the advertisers have additional targeting in place like:
- Geotargeting
- Rate / frequency capping
- Pixel targeting
- Demographic targeting
In the cases above, it is not possible for Broadstreet to “know” if the third party ad delivered. Only clear communication between the publisher and client at the start of the campaign can prevent this from being an issue.