“We identified – just this year, in the first half of this year – 800 fraudulent apps. That was more than we identified in all of 2019,” says Woolway.
He should know. As EVP, Business Development, at fraud and viewability ad-tech vendor DoubleVerify, Woolway is charged with answering a growing volume of ad buyers’ questions over a practice that, until recently, connected TV was believed to be immune from.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Woolway explains the scale of TV ad fraud – and what can be done to stop it.
Fraud vectors
Although it was first launched in 2008, DoubleVerify says ad fraud tactics have developed.
“Fast-forward to today, and it’s a much more complex environment,” Woolway says. He describes the following methods:
- Bot fraud: Scripts mimicking human browser behavior.
- Ad spoofing: “An ad impression is being represented to a buyer that it really isn’t – typically.” For example, a desktop display impression presents itself as a pricier video or CTV impression.
- IP address spoofing: An internet location masquerades as another.
- Mobile malware: Nefarious software installed on phones is triggering fake views.
- Session fraud: “The fraudster themselves buys the ad impression and generated multiple ad impressions based into that one ad call.”
Those methods have come to connected TV platforms. “Fraud follows the money, and CTV is an incredibly hot channel right now for our customers.”
Fraud Lab
In the new war on fraud, DoubleVerify’s cavalry is Fraud Lab, a group data scientists and analysts it assembled a decade ago and which began looking at the growing TV fraud problem in 2018.
Woolway says the Fraud Lab has a two-pronged attack mechanism to overcome the problem:
- “A machine-learning, automated algorithm that is out there scanning the massive amounts of data that DoubleVerify has access to. We’re integrated into every major DSP that’s out there. We have billions and billions of ad impressions running daily through our ad tags. machine learning comes in, pours over these massive amounts of data.”
- “Human experts come in, review the patterns that the algorithms picked up. They feed tuning into the algorithms to keep the algorithms up to speed.”
First 48 hours
The killer problem is that 75% of the damage that any bot will do will occur within its first 48 hours of activity.
During that time, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of advertising spend may have been misspent.
So DoubleVerify pushes updated “fraud tables” 100 times a day, taking account of new tactics and perpetrators.
“Every new channel requires a different look,” Woolway adds. “When we started, we were looking at site map fraud on site and a bot fraud on desktop. Well, now with CTV, we’re finding some of the old schemes, but we’re finding brand new ways that these fraudsters are perpetrating in order to generate ad fraud.”
You are watching “CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective,” a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos, please click here.
]]>That is according to major-network exec who says buyers are encouraged by technology that puts guide rails and control around the technology.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Abbie Reichner, Programmatic Product Lead, Fox, describes the uptick – and says more assurances still need to be given.
Programmatic boom
“Last year, they really started to experiment and dip their toes into the programmatic space – that was mainly through the private marketplace,” Reichner says.
“This year, it’s really more apparent that programmatic is becoming a core part of the business and a key part of the strategy. In some cases, some of these major brands are really only executing through programmatic pipes.”
“This year, we’re seeing a tonne of requests for programmatic guaranteed. We’ve seen a significant increase in agencies and brands and buyers requesting for either executing their upfront commitments or a portion of their upfront commitments through programmatic guaranteed.
“It’s kind of switched our ad stack so that we have these sort of direct deals or deals that are similar to a direct IO, but they’re all going through the programmatic pipes.”
Spending growth
EMarketer in November estimated programmatic TV ad spending will reach $6.69 billion in the US by 2021, more than doubling from $2.77 billion.
That makes it a still-small but fast-growing part of the overall TV ad spending pie.
Ad buyers are getting interested by the ability to target specific audiences or households, the ability to use other data in doing so and the ability.
EMarketer also estimated CTV ad spending will reach $10.81 billion in the US in 2021 – up 56% from two years earlier, and representing around 15% of total US TV ad spending.
But Fox’s Reichner says more could be unlocked if some remaining challenges were tidied up.
Fighting fraud
She says ad fraud, which had plagued programmatic display ad sales, has also arrived in connected TV and video.
“I would love to say that the CTV space is 100% fraud free, it’s 100% viewable – but that really isn’t the case anymore,” Reichner says.
“We are seeing a rise in that fraudulent activity and CTV has become a larger target. So buyers are tasking us as a publisher to answer the question of ‘how do we combat this?’
“Our buyers are starting to demand transparency throughout the entire supply chain. So we’re doing that through working with our key partners, adopting new ad tools and through data pass-back.”
Taking steps
To that end, Fox was an early adopter of app-ads.txt, an equivalent of the IAB’s ads.txt standard that allows bona fide publishers to publish lists of the ad-tech platforms that are allowed to sell their inventory.
And Reichner says she is also “standardising bundle IDs”, meaning buyers and DSPs can more easily learn about ad impression effectiveness and identify fraudulent activity from spoofed apps.
But Reichner wants more.
“One thing that I would like the industry to move forward with is content object data,” she says.
That means metadata that describes the TV show, like rating, genre and episode descriptions.
Richer inventory data
“Not everyone is ready to send and receive that data within the bid stream,” Reichner acknowledges. “At Fox, we are able to – if you come to us, publisher-direct, we’re able to apply those show mixes and those DNA lists.
“We’re able to provide post-campaign, shell-level reporting, but all of that wouldn’t be necessary if we can start to include that data and that information in the bid stream.
“Buyers are asking for it. So we just need the standardisation and the technology to kind of catch up to where we need to be.”
You are watching “CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective,” a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos, please click here.
]]>But, despite the digital-style tactics, many in the industry are craving TV-style familiarity.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jessica Brown GroupM, Director, Digital Investment, GroupM, says she wants consistent data about her ad buys.
TV parity
“We need the same thing that we get in TV when we place a linear buy,” Brown says.
“When you do a TV buy, you know the pod position you’re in, you know the time your commercial ran, you know the show, you know the content of the show, which episode number it is. We need that same level of detail that we’re accustomed to.
“From some partners, we don’t know where we’re running – maybe we get a sample list before the campaign starts. Some partners are a little bit better – they’re giving us maybe a post-delivery report and maybe 50 to 70% of where your impressions ran on some of the content. On the other side, some of the content owners, maybe they’ll give us the top 20 shows.
“But, in each case, there’s still something missing and none of them are giving it to us – giving us that information in a consistent way. And none of it’s really from a trusted third party verification partner, which is really what we need. We need it in a consistent way from a third-party verification partner, someone like DoubleVerify.”
Connected growth
Over-the-top streaming services accounted for 25% of all US TV-viewing minutes during Q2 2020, according to Nielsen Streaming Meter.
EMarketer estimates CTV ad spending will reach $10.81 billion in the US in 2021 – up 56% from two years earlier, and representing around 15% of total US TV ad spending.
But GroupM’s Brown is worried that growth also means the emergence of nefarious fake CTV publishers, which could end up taking her spend if controls are not in place.
“We know where the money is, there will be fraud there,” she says. “We’ve seen cases where some of our ads, not necessarily our clients, but we’ve seen other ads they’re running on pirated content, or maybe a mobile phone, when they should be running on a CTV.
“We need that reporting, that measurement, that transparency that we’re used to getting in other digital channels to be applied to CTV so that we can even maybe block the content that we don’t want to be running on and make sure that we’re getting the quality that we need.”
Fraud rising
DoubleVerify’s (DV) Global Insights Report 2020 lifts the lid:
- Q1 2020 CTV fraud was 161% up on the prior year.
- Since March 2019, DV has identified 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps — 60% of which were identified in 2020.
The report amplifies a datapoint given to Beet.TV in June, when it said CTV ad fraud is occurring in three ways – fraudulent apps containing bots, cloud server farms and ad spoofing.
You are watching “CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective,” a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos, please click here.
]]>“We’re seeing an increased role for CTV in our plans,” Chris Price, head of global digital marketing and media transformation at Coca-Cola, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “We have brands where CTV and on-demand represent a much more sizable portion than linear does.”
Audience Migration to CTV
The soft drink giant sees an opportunity to improve the efficiency of its media spending among on-demand channels that have driven the cord-cutting trend in the past decade, though the pandemic has accelerated that shift in media consumption.
“Even before the pandemic, consumers were absolutely migrating to the space,” Price said. “We’ve seen ratings fall consistently year over year, and as marketers like us who were putting more money into linear TV were building excessive frequency.”
He cited research indicating that it’s 50% more expensive today to achieve the same 50% reach as it was five years ago, making on-demand channels more significant for mass-market brands. Those channels will grow in importance as the cord-cutting trend cuts the number of linear TV households.
“The consumer is making the choice for us,” Price said. “The consumer is migrating to on-demand. Once you realize you have got the ability to watch amazing, high-quality content and programming when you want, where you want and however much you want, why would you ever go back to linear?”
Ad spending on CTV is forecast to hit almost $8 billion in the U.S. this year, and nearly double to $15.6 billion by 2023, according eMarketer data cited by The Wall Street Journal.
Digital Lessons on Ad Fraud
As marketers shift their media spending to CTV platforms, they are increasingly vulnerable to ad fraud that saps the effectiveness of their campaigns. Fraudulent CTV traffic rates surged by 161% in the first quarter of 2020 from a year earlier, according to digital media measurement firm DoubleVerify, which has detected 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps.
Despite that threat, Price is optimistic that the media, marketing and ad tech industries will tackle the problem to ensure that CTV channels are sustainable platforms for advertising. He said marketers have learned the lessons of the past, when digital media were rife with fraud and bot networks that generated fake traffic.
“We don’t want to make that mistake again in CTV,” Price said. “We’re in a position to know what our expectations are and know what we expect from providers and publishers and know what measurement should be in place.”
You are watching “CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective,” a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos, please click here.
]]>Emarketer previously forecast US connected TV ad spend would hit $14.14 billion by 2023, 4.7% of the total.
It brings new powers like targeting individual households and frequency-capping ad exposures.
But, in this video interview with Beet.TV, Prajwal Barthur, VP of products at InMobi, an ad-tech company steeped in mobile origins, says connected TV (CTV) has a lot to learn from mobile.
Measurement
Barthur says connected TV is seeing two main kinds of ad buyer – traditional buyers seeking addressability and brand uplift, and digital buyers keen on television but with digital-style measurement.
“So, you have two different variety of buyers … whose KPIs are very, very different,” Barthur says. “CTV is in between both because it’s not completely traditional and it’s not completely digitised yet.
- Completion rates are currently the most-used metric. According to Barthur, buyers are asking: “Have I shown my ad to the user? And has the user actually watched the entire video?”
- Conversion is next up. “That could be an in-store purchase, or it could be a footfall to their store,” Barthur says. “But the technology has not completely gone to supporting the closed-loop measurement optimization and attribution use cases yet on the connected TV side.”
Transparency
Barthur says transparency and fraud are emerging as important issues for connected TV ad buyers, just as they have in digital display previously.
- Price transparency: He says buyers want to know: “What am I paying, and how much is that impression worth? If I’m paying $25 for 1000 impressions, is that worth that $25, and who is taking that? Is it all going to the publisher? Is it going to an exchange in between?”
- Impression transparency: Advertisers want to know: “Were am I showing these ads? Am I actually showing this on applications that I intend to show?”
“It’s important to let advertisers know that their particular impression was shown on this particular channel and was viewed by these users,” he says.
“(The capability) is currently not there yet, but, as and when the connected TV ecosystems becomes more digital in nature, these sorts of verification measurement capabilities are going to come into the picture, which makes the buying more transparent.”
Fraud-fighting
Barthur warns that the ecosystem needs to come together to plug a gap in combatting the growth of ad fraud and involuntary traffic (IVT) on connected TV.
DoubleVerify’s (DV) recently Global Insights Report 2020 lifts the lid:
- Q1 2020 CTV fraud was 161% up on the prior year.
- Since March 2019, DV has identified 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps — 60% of which were identified in 2020.
We're thrilled to launch our 2020 Global Insights Report! In it, we uncover actionable insights for advertisers to drive efficient return on their media investments and address future trends expected to impact digital advertising strategies. Download here: https://t.co/YQGxvgCjqU pic.twitter.com/ayOXhr7SyX
— DoubleVerify (@doubleverify) August 19, 2020
“Connected TV is still pretty new,” InMobi’s Barthur says. There are no no software development kits (SDKs), which are present within a Roku TV, to let any measurement companies decide if the user is actually watching it. All of this happens outside of the TV ecosystem or the TV box itself.
“So it’s extremely important for these operating systems to open up certain capabilities for companies like us to get in there and then understand the efficacy of these ads.
“That is a big gap, that we don’t know what is exactly happening on the system. Is the ad being shown, is it being rendered, the user watch it? How long did he watch it? All of these are things that are derived, but not actually seen.
“If you look at an Apple or Android phone, the ad is rendered by the developer and SDKs, which are sitting within the developer. But when it comes to connected TV, that’s not the case. It’s all controlled by the operating systems.”
This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>In the new world, the emerging medium of over-the-top TV is going to need to convince marketers that their ad was truly effective.
That’s the view of one ad agency leader charged with plotting the course to the OTT future.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Mike Fisher, Essence VP of Advanced TV & Audio, says he welcomes ad verification providers branching out into ad measurement.
Finding effectiveness
Fisher says brands have some worries about how their OTT ad money is really being spent, and whether it is really effective.
“With that comes client concern, and really the need to understand more from a third-party perspective, where these ads are running, how they’re reaching their viewer and ensure that they’re being delivered on target,” he says.
“The premium publishers, who have a lot of skin in the game and want to continue to drive substantial tier-one marketing budgets through their platforms, they’re trustworthy.
“The questions that marketers have (are) more around the longer-tail publishers, the aggregators, the programmatic buying pipes. They want to make sure that they’re upholding those buying channels and modalities to the same standard that they’re holding the premium television networks do – knowing what type of content it’s running in, making sure it’s brand safe, making sure it’s viewable and measurable.”
Personalization, democratization, globalization, diversity, and commerce: @gschmitt sets out five ways the pandemic is catalyzing a new creative era in an op-ed for @CampaignLiveUS today – and why there's no going back. https://t.co/5nGHWcpyzx
— Essence (@essenceglobal) September 25, 2020
Plugging the gap
But Fisher sees a role emerging for ad verification software providers. They have typically been focused on simply establishing whether an ad impression was viable – in other words, whether it was viewable by a real human.
“Move on beyond just validating that the impressions were delivered to a human,” Fisher says.
“The third-party ad verification platforms have an opportunity to step in and be that trusted validation partner – not just for the advertiser and agency, but for those tier-two tier-three publishers and tier-one programmatic buying pipes.”
Fisher hopes that will plug a “gap” he sees in OTT ad sales. He says TV buyers are still trying to use traditional metrics.
“Brands want the flexibility now to turn things on and off and not have a pre-agreed-upon commitment.” Smart stuff here from @essenceglobal's Anthony Rinaldi about why #ProgrammaticAds have been able to weather #COVID19. https://t.co/a2LhLpS7Kk pic.twitter.com/29Ewwcj7RN
— Ben Zimmerman (@BenZimmermanMDG) September 15, 2020
This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>TV may be considered significantly more trustworthy as an advertising medium, but it’s future is not pre-destined to be the same.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Lauren Tiley, DoubleVerify
Senior Director, Strategic Client Partners, says that connected TV is growing – and with that growth comes risk.
Going global
“It’s all different everywhere you go,” Tiley says. “It’s evolving internationally a little bit different than the path that the U.S. has taken.
“In the UK, for example, they adapt a lot more quickly to this trend. The broadcasters have taken on CTV inventory delivery, and they created solutions that focused on extending their footprint, which is amazing. It’s great to see that inventory is being delivered where people want to spend their time.
“Broadly speaking, the infrastructure is very different and, obviously, regulation varies from market to market. It tends to be treated a little bit more like broadcast media. The reach and the scale of (that) … is something that all advertisers want.”
A creeping fraud problem
In analog, unconnected TV’s ad-moving infrastructure naturally mitigated against the incursion of nefarious ad practices that have plagued digital display.
But now many connected TV services are shipping in ads via programmatic marketplaces. Tiley thinks that poses a threat.
“The overarching assumption that all CTV content is viewable, that there’s not a lot of fraud,” she says. We’re really starting to see that assumption kind of break down. Fraud follows the money. As you start to see this explosion of interest in CTV then the CPMs of CTV, this is naturally where fraud’s going to go.”
In ad fraud, nefarious fly-by-night publishers set up and automatically initiate ad views to take ad spend. Methods include fraudulent apps containing bots, cloud server farms and spoofing
DoubleVerify’s (DV) new Global Insights Report 2020 lifts the lid:
- Q1 2020 CTV fraud was 161% up on the prior year.
- Since March 2019, DV has identified 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps — 60% of which were identified in 2020.
We're thrilled to launch our 2020 Global Insights Report! In it, we uncover actionable insights for advertisers to drive efficient return on their media investments and address future trends expected to impact digital advertising strategies. Download here: https://t.co/YQGxvgCjqU pic.twitter.com/ayOXhr7SyX
— DoubleVerify (@doubleverify) August 19, 2020
Viewability in the frame
Whilst there is an assumption that what is on the TV screen is always in view, Tiley says that is not always correct. For one, ad units across these systems vary widely.
She says the aim is to create a viewability standard for connected TV which means “100% fully on-screen”.
“How can we make it easier for platforms and publishers to adopt measurement? ,” she asks. “That’s something that… and that we see that as an important part of our role in the industry.
This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>But that doesn’t mean the beauty brand thinks the internet-enabled TV ad opportunity is unblemished yet.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, L’Oreal’s SVP and head of media, Shenan Reed, a media agency veteran, opens up on how the company is navigating the opportunities and challenges opening up in a crazy 2020.
Improving CTV
“It’s a very important place, not just for us, but for many marketers to pay attention to,” she says. “It presents all sorts of interesting opportunities in targeting and better audience understanding.
“But it’s also very nascent and it has a lot of room for growth and improvement in my opinion.
“Our challenge in this space is measurement and scale. Those are the two biggest challenges I see in the world of CTV at the moment.”
Reed acknowledges internet TV viewing is booming. But she says: “We just don’t have the cross-device measurement that we’d like to see yet. I continue to challenge all of our partners to come back to us with potential solutions.”
Measuring up
L’Oreal has turned to verification partners that can measure viewability, help place ads in appropriate contexts and safeguard against fraudulent ad publishing.
“We are fairly strict as an organisation about verification and making sure that we are avoiding places with fraud, that our content is being seen our creative are being seen in environments that are appropriate for our brands.”
Some of the these issues have plagued the classical digital display ecosystem, whilst many had assumed that TV would be, by default, immune to such concerns.
But now those worries are amplifying as verification vendors uncover evidence of a growing fraud problem.
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— L'Oréal Paris USA (@LOrealParisUSA) October 9, 2020
Pandemic pivot to new normal
Reed says brands like L’Oreal have had to navigate a lot during 2020, a year in which a global viral pandemic reset the norms of advertising.
She says that, early on, that forced a re-think of ad creative that might show transmission risks like hugging, kissing or high-fiving, and brands pivoted from selling to expressing empathy.
Now she says brands want to begin selling again but must “make sure that we are more paying attention to the places where our customers are, as opposed to historically where we’ve presumed they be”.
I know I wasn't here when this was done, but these filters are so much fun and truly make a teams/zoom meeting so much more enjoyable. https://t.co/rEh4TxAIVu
— shenan (@shenan) September 12, 2020
Ecommerce and discovery
The big new consumer trend she is watching – ecommerce. “I think the numbers are saying 10 years of growth in eight months, numbers that I don’t think any of us were expecting,” Reed says.
“We were already at a bit of a tipping point for the industry in that so many new payment platforms had come available to consumers to make the checkout process easier.” She cites Shopify, the ecommerce enablement platform, as leading the charge.
All of which, Reed says, is increasing consumer trust and decreasing friction.
But even that may have its down side.
“The thing that I worry about in that space and the risk that I see is a loss of potential serendipity,” Reed says. “We may actually be getting to a place where, because the targeting of our advertising is so good, because the focus of what we can put in front of a customer is so specific, that we may be taking away the opportunity for consumers to truly discover (new products).”
This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>But, for that opportunity to reach its potential, the industry is going to have to give both parties the metrics they need to prove effectiveness.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Remove term: Matt Mclaughlin of DoubleVerify says connected TV can learn a thing or two from mobile.
From mobile to TV
DoubleVerify has been working to bring Authenticated Impressions, its KPI for campaign effectiveness, from other digital platforms to connected TV.
“I think we learned early from the mobile space that it’s really important for brands and their media buying teams to be able to do it in a scalable way,” McLaughlin says.
“I think we all know there’s challenges or differences in the environment around things like measuring viewability, how do you determine the context that you’re appearing next to.
“We’re really focused on solving those challenges in a scalable way, because it is the minimum standard of quality for impressions that a brand should pay for.”
One tag to rule them all
McLaughlin acknowledges the challenges. For one, unlike mobile, which has basically two main operating systems, there is a plethora of emerging OTT TV platforms.
His company is redeploying Video OmniTag – a system that combines OMID, VPAID and other video measurement tags into a single VAST tag, across device channels – on connected TV.
“The same Video OmniTag we have works no matter whether you’re in desktop, mobile app space, mobile web space or connected TV,” McLaughlin says.
“That’s key for operational efficiency for brands so that they can conduct measurement using a single video campaign and, no matter what, whether it’s a direct buy, a programmatic buy, what type of environment they’re appearing inside, the same measurement tag and solution works for them.”
This report is our best ever. Check it out if you have the chance… https://t.co/TLv4yjhQST
— Matt McLaughlin (@MattMcLaughlin) August 19, 2020
Safety on screen
Beyond measurement, however, ad buyers are asking for further capability. They want to ensure the connected TV environments in which they appear are appropriate.
That’s because a growing proportion of connected TV ads are bought programmatically, in automated fashion. Now advertisers want to have a little more control.
“Brands are asking us for content level controls, understanding the specific content,” McLaughlin says.
“If there’s a show or an episode that they’re appearing alongside, they want the transparency and the control so that they can ensure their placements are effective and representative of their brand values.”
Fighting fraud
And, despite the perception that connected TV is immune to the ad fraud that has plagued other digital channels – which sees bots fake human traffic in order to be paid ad revenue – DoubleVerify is having to work to stop the emergence of the phenomenon in connected TV, too.
“What we see, especially in programmatic ecosystem is ad impressions that are manufactured by bots or originate from a mobile device, and when they’re sold, they get misrepresented as being a connected TV device,” McLaughlin says.
“They can often achieve a higher CPM because of the perceived quality of connected TV environment. And, oftentimes, because it’s sold as a CTV impression, there aren’t the same measurement techniques applied to it, and it’s easier for them to get away with the fraud.”
The company is extending similar fraud-fighting techniques it has offered for other channels to connected TV platforms, and has plugged into buying platforms like Trade Desk, SpotX and MediaMath to bring that capability to the programmatic marketplace.
DV's Fraud Lab recently uncovered MultiTerra, a highly sophisticated botnet designed to create fraudulent inventory across both #CTV and mobile. Download our full report to learn more about the process of detecting and eliminating this botnet: https://t.co/iB1X0vuv7q #adfraud pic.twitter.com/QjeNbzdxHX
— DoubleVerify (@doubleverify) September 18, 2020
This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>But those brands will need to do more than that to avoid marketing to off-limits audience members.
That is according to healthcare media planning and buying agency Publicis Health Media.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, PHM’s VP, Media Technology Chatigny Imburgia explains how the world is changing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
CTV’s age split
Imburgia says connected TV viewing is exploding, especially as many consumers have been kept at home by quarantine and social distancing.
“You have those who may be in an older age bracket who prefer watching live, but then you also have a younger age group … they’d prefer to see content that’s custom-created for them,” she explains.
“With healthcare, what that changes for us is, we have an opportunity to reach more people and help them, whether they’re the caregiver or the actual patient.
“It’s really important for us to allocate dollars in our spend to get into CTV so that we can ensure that we’re not missing a portion of the population.”
It’s been a crazy year. So crazy that Andrea Palmer wanted to (virtually) sit down with podcast vet @ebmoss for an in-depth conversation looking at some of the ways healthcare has pivoted. Check out the latest @InsiderIntervws episode here: https://t.co/IP0gmLGCBv
— Publicis Health Media (@tweetPHM) September 28, 2020
Age concern
But Imburgia says connected TV’s handy age segmentation isn’t enough – ad buyers must use tools at their disposal to make more fine-grained buying decisions, especially in pharmaceutical, where brands are often barred from reaching out to minors.
“We have to be very careful on where we’re actually putting our messages out,” she say.
“If we can’t advertise to kids under a certain age, we have to be very cognisant of some of the new platforms that exist, more in the social media or short-form video streaming services.”
So Imburgia says she relies on partners like DoubleVerify for software that can verify the viewability, reach and audience exposed to particular ad inventory.
PHM clients include some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical brands.
COVID-19 and the Changing Nature of Patient-Physician Relationships
Viral media
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, many media buyers shied away from content about or adjacent to coronavirus, fearing negative connotation would put off audiences.
Plenty of research has since disproved that theory, and media organizations’ efforts to convince buyers of their value – both to audiences and to brands at this time – have borne some fruit.
But PHM’s Imburgia says many brands should still be wary of media missteps.
“We have some clients that really just don’t want to run against as much COVID content,” she says.
Congratulations to PHM’s Andrea Palmer for being recognized at the 2020 #MMMHallofFemme today! Several incredible women were honored for their contributions and positive impact in the health and marketing fields. pic.twitter.com/5OVfeoQHyo
— Publicis Health Media (@tweetPHM) September 22, 2020
No false dawns
A chief reason for standing on the sidelines is not raising consumers’ COVID-19 hopes unnecessarily, Imburgia says.
“Here we are, still working from home, waiting on a vaccine or a cure, whichever comes first,” she says.
“You don’t want to give false hope because we’re six months, seven months in and not much has changed, so you have to really be careful.
“Our guidance is … it’s somewhat of a value statement of where you fall but it’s very much, ‘Are you confident in your product coming to market?’
“If you’re not … you have to be very careful about where your brand stands from a values standpoint.”
This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>But, slowly but surely, fraudsters are following the money to the booming OTT TV landscape.
So ad-trading platforms are plugging in fraud-fighting software in a bid to eradicate the problem before it smothers the nascent opportunity.
Emerging channel
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Nick Frizzell, Vice President of Inventory Quality and Planning at video and connected TV (CTV) ad platform SpotX, describes the trend.
“CTV is an emerging medium. There’s always going to be little nuances or technical details that we’re catching up on. Some of the industry initiatives like Ads.txt are not as widely adopted.
“There’s also bad actors out there that are trying to garner that media-spend away from legitimate actors. Bad actors always follow the money, and CTV is definitely where the money is heading.”
What do viewers think of the streaming wars? Unsurprisingly, they want access to content without increasing cost. Get the full details in our latest blog post. https://t.co/PSc4r8WvPX
— Nick Frizzell (@NickFrizzell) September 3, 2020
Fighting the fraud
But the likes of SpotX are not going to take the rise of fraud lying down. They are turning to ad fraud-fighting software vendors, many of which have a track record in reducing fraudulent activity in digital display environments.
“You can get there, be confident in your media-buying strategy if you implement the right tactics, ask the right questions and tailor your media-buying strategy to the CTV landscape,” Frizzell says.
SpotX is using DoubleVerify, the 12-year-old company that is one of the leading such suppliers.
“DoubleVerify helps proactively eliminate any invalid traffic from being monetized within SpotX,” Frizzell says.
“So, before a media buyer even has the opportunity to place a bid and serve a programmatic impression, it’s first being pre-filtered by DoubleVerify to eliminate any forms of invalid traffic
“So we’re providing buy-side partners with ideally fraud-free inventory, or as close to fraud-free inventory as possible.”
A growing problem
In June, DoubleVerify told Beet.TV how CTV ad fraud is occurring in three ways:
- Fraudulent apps containing bots
- Cloud server farms
- Spoofing
DoubleVerify’s (DV) recently-published new Global Insights Report 2020 lifts the lid:
- Q1 2020 CTV fraud was 161% up on the prior year.
- Since March 2019, DV has identified 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps — 60% of which were identified in 2020.
The report says that operators assume CTV is 100% viewable – but DoubleVerify says it has found Video Completion Rates of 90% and Fully On-Screen rates of 88% in CTV.
We're thrilled to launch our 2020 Global Insights Report! In it, we uncover actionable insights for advertisers to drive efficient return on their media investments and address future trends expected to impact digital advertising strategies. Download here: https://t.co/YQGxvgCjqU pic.twitter.com/ayOXhr7SyX
— DoubleVerify (@doubleverify) August 19, 2020
This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>- the old one, in which advertisers bought air-time watched by rough demographics and then completed modelling to understand its effectiveness
- the new, over-the-top TV ecosystem, which can accurately measure consumption and even track through to outcomes.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Amy Guenel, VP of Product Marketing at video ad platform Tremor, explains how buyers are adapting.
Finding effectiveness
“A lot of our clientele comes from the entertainment sector where we tend to lean into TV tune-in measurement research to help validate that the ad campaign actually drove people to tune in,” she says.
“Similarly, with the majority of dollars we’re seeing shift from linear TV over to connected TV, we see a lot of asks around, ‘Did my digital campaign or my connected TV campaign actually drive incremental reach?’
“And so being able to flexibly provide a variety of different ways to report on the success has been very impactful for us.”
Fraudsters follow
Comscore recently reported US households streaming OTT content had jumped 17% between April 2018 and April 2020, to 69.8 million.
As the medium grows, so does its attractiveness to bad actors.
“As the video ecosystem in particular has grown significantly, we’re seeing those fraudsters follow,” Guenel says.
“(Advertisers) want to ensure that that supply is viewable, that it’s fraud free. They want to be able to tap into audiences of all sorts, whether it’s their own first party data or whether it’s leveraging some of our exclusive data partnerships like ACR targeting capabilities, and they want to make sure that it performs. At the end of the day, that is the most important thing.”
Whilst TV, even internet-connected TV, is widely considered to be safer and more dependable than other forms of digital advertising, fraud is creeping in.
DoubleVerify’s (DV) new Global Insights Report 2020 lifts the lid:
- Q1 2020 CTV fraud was 161% up on the prior year.
- Since March 2019, DV has identified 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps — 60% of which were identified in 2020.
Methods include:
- Fraudulent apps containing bots
- Cloud server farms
- Spoofing
The report says that operators assume CTV is 100% viewable – but DoubleVerify says it has found Video Completion Rates of 90% and Fully On-Screen rates of 88% in CTV.
We're thrilled to launch our 2020 Global Insights Report! In it, we uncover actionable insights for advertisers to drive efficient return on their media investments and address future trends expected to impact digital advertising strategies. Download here: https://t.co/YQGxvgCjqU pic.twitter.com/ayOXhr7SyX
— DoubleVerify (@doubleverify) August 19, 2020
Tremor has integrated with DoubleVerify’s software to enable OTT fraud prevention.
“We’ve partnered with a variety of ad verification vendors, and specifically have doubled down with DoubleVerify,” Guenel says.
“We think that their holistic solution for targeting and filtering for IVT and fraudulent activity has been superior, and it’s something that we utilise for all of our supply that’s running through our platform
“So therefore, if you’re buying through Tremor DSP or you are buying through a third party DSP platform, you can feel comfortable, clients can feel comfortable, that their supply is brand protected.”
This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>That’s according to an ad-tech exec who is trying to give them that capability.
There’s been a lot of chat in the industry about the growth of CTV of up 50% in COVID time,” says Amobee chief commercial officer Jack Bamberger.
“But what’s interesting separately is that linear is up actually 10% in the last six months as well.
“Linear is still very much here to stay. No one’s walking away from broadcast television.”
Amobee has been recognized by Gartner as a Leader in their 2020 Magic Quadrant for our ability to execute and completeness of vision. Click here to download the full report: https://t.co/6TQ6ooF21u pic.twitter.com/zTar1acYaM
— Amobee (@amobee) September 28, 2020
Come together
Bamberger joined Amobee in April after serving as Verizon Media’s VP of global partnerships, bringing relationships with global agencies and other accounts following earlier stints at MEC, Dentsu, Meredith, Time Warner and IPG.
In September, the company launched CTV Allocator, a product allowing ad buyers to combine negotiated upfront and newfront direct ad buys with programmatic deals, thereby unifying the two channels.
“If you’re buying in the upfront or you want to buy linear TV and CTV together, we have a data-driven tech platform that will help you minimise excess frequency and reach overlap as well as improve efficiencies across your direct sold CTV and your programmatic CTV with your existing linear schedule,” Bamberger says.
“And since everyone right now is trying to figure out how do you smartly plan, buy, and allocate CTV, it’s really critical because you’re trying to squeeze every possible dollar out of your buy and give yourself the best possible cross screen experience that’s optimised for reach and frequency.
Bamberger says CTV Allocator gives buyers results in less than five minutes.
Today, Amobee unveils CTV Allocator, a first of its kind planning and portfolio optimization solution designed to help media buyers unify premium direct and programmatic CTV audiences. Read the full release here: https://t.co/OD91twzN0H
— Amobee (@amobee) September 15, 2020
Fraud-fighting
As connected TV audiences and ad spend grows, the medium is drawing more bad actors, like fake apps which spoof traffic in order to generate ad revenue – ad fraud.
“It’s really important that folks know and trust what we’re doing, how we’re delivering inventory, media and that we are a company that you can trust to make sure that you’re getting what you pay for,” Bamberger says.
“So for us to have a fraud-free guarantee and CTV as a partnership with DoubleVerify was really critical.”
Whilst TV, even internet-connected TV, is widely considered to be safer and more dependable than other forms of digital advertising, fraud is creeping in.
DoubleVerify’s (DV) new Global Insights Report 2020 lifts the lid:
- Q1 2020 CTV fraud was 161% up on the prior year.
- Since March 2019, DV has identified 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps — 60% of which were identified in 2020.
Methods include:
- Fraudulent apps containing bots
- Cloud server farms
- Spoofing
This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>In September, Zagorski joined as CEO of DoubleVerify, after exiting the same role from Telaria amid its merger with Rubicon Project.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, he says his new mission is to build advertisers’ confidence that connected TV is a reliable and effective medium.
Connected growth
“What’s really interesting around connected television is the fact that, unlike traditional linear television, there is no single metric by which all buyers can evaluate the efficacy and reach of their buys,” Zagorski says.
“You have a Nielsen statistic in linear television, which has become the de facto gold standard of measurement, but there’s no such thing in CTV.
“I think one of the great opportunities for companies like DoubleVerify is, when we look at that $70 billion in linear TV ad spend, how do we move that to connected television?”
Comscore recently reported US households streaming OTT content had jumped 17% between April 2018 and April 2020, to 69.8 million. EMarketer in November 2019 forecast that US connected TV ad spending would hit $8.88 billion in 2020 and $14.12 billion by 2023.
Finding viewability
But CTV’s growth is not without its travails. Zagorski says a key challenge is whether the ads are viewable in the first place.
“There’s this grand assumption that, well, since it was delivered to a television set in someone’s living room, it must be viewable,” he says. “Well, the reality of it is in many cases, it’s not.
“New digital formats may not take up the full screen. If it’s not a full-screen CTV ad, as well as the fact that, if the full ad isn’t viewed, is it truly viewable?
“We found a large percentage of ads don’t get delivered through that first quartile of viewing. It’s not truly viewable. As a matter of fact, we’ve seen only about 88% of ads that are delivered to CTV meet our viewability criteria. Viewability is not guaranteed.”
Fraud building
DoubleVerify measures ad fraud, viewability and brand safety.
For Zagorski, that means a shift in emphasis. At Telaria, he was concerned with reducing friction to make ad trading easier and automated.
At DoubleVerify, he says: “The bigger question is, how do we build confidence?”
In the background, is the looming threat of ad fraud, a practice through which nefarious fly-by-night publishers set up and automatically initiate ad views to take ad spend. Methods include fraudulent apps containing bots, cloud server farms and spoofing
DoubleVerify’s (DV) new Global Insights Report 2020 lifts the lid:
- Q1 2020 CTV fraud was 161% up on the prior year.
- Since March 2019, DV has identified 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps — 60% of which were identified in 2020.
We're thrilled to launch our 2020 Global Insights Report! In it, we uncover actionable insights for advertisers to drive efficient return on their media investments and address future trends expected to impact digital advertising strategies. Download here: https://t.co/YQGxvgCjqU pic.twitter.com/ayOXhr7SyX
— DoubleVerify (@doubleverify) August 19, 2020
Programmatic to problematic
Now Zagorski says programmatic is a little… problematic.
“It’s great for reducing friction, but it also creates a lack of transparency on what’s being delivered from the content and producer to the buyer,” he says.
That is a key reason behind the emergence of connected TV ad fraud.
Zagorski says programmatic buying growth created a lack of transparency.
All of which matters to ad buyers for whom COVID-19 has throttled their appetite to spend, at the the same they are trying to navigate the kinds of ad environments in which they want to be seen in what is an increasingly charged and polarised society.
This video is part of CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective, a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
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