PubMatic, the ad network optimization company, seems to be putting their recent round of funding to good use.  Yesterday they announced a new feature called Ad Inspector for their Premium clients.  Ad Inspector allows publishers to run “forensic” tests on all ads displaying on their Web site, providing them with information identifying which ad network or exchange served a particular ad, as well as any ad networks that defaulted in the process.

Anyone who runs multiple ad networks on a site can tell you that when there is a problem with an ad, it’s almost impossible to try and figure out where that ad came from.  Many networks don’t give you visibility into which ads may be running on your account at any given time, and the same campaign could easily come from two different networks.  You see an ad that violates your Web site’s policies and tracking it down is such a difficult task it’s often not worth worrying about.  PubMatic has changed that with Ad Inspector.

“Tracking down where an ad comes from and stopping the inappropriate ones does not have to be a difficult task,” says PubMatic co-founder and CEO, Rajeev Goel.

“PubMatic Ad Inspector, available as a FireFox add-on, is geared for ad operations professionals in large publishers who manage complex environments with numerous sites, multiple ad networks and multiple ad units. Information from ads on their sites can be captured in a snapshot through the Ad Inspector application.” – Read more from the PubMatic press release.

If you haven’t heard about PubMatic, you really need to check them out. I was at the Ad Revenue conference last year in San Francisco, and spent some good time talking to Rajeev.  He’s got a passion to change the advertising industry and provide tools and resources to better the way we operate.

PubMatic is a meta ad server.  It sits between you and individual ad networks to provide intelligent services that maximize your revenue and minimize the complexity of managing your ad inventory.  When your Website calls an ad from an ad network, PubMatic chooses in real time which network is going to pay the highest CPM, and delivers the ad from that network.  They also offer many tools and help to make sure your ads are optimized for the highest return.