IAS announced it had acquired Publica, a CTV ads server platform, for $220 million in cash and stock.
Now it plans to launch “a comprehensive brand safety and suitability solution for CTV advertisers and publishers in the coming months”.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, IAS CEO Lisa Utzschneider explains why her company is following the road to connected TV ad verification.
Utzschneider explained four reasons IAS is acquiring Publica.
1. The M&A template works
“We have a successful formula in place when it comes to acquisitions. We’ve done this already two times while I’ve been at IAS.”
2. Leaning in to CTV
“It’s the first inning of a long game with CTV. And, given that Publica has a leading CTV classification platform, (it) is just such opportunity for IAS.”
3. Spreading to the sell-side
“They have deep strategic integrated partnerships with some of the leading video publishers. Publishers, like Samsung, Philo, Fox. The majority of our business is with advertiser-direct. The combination of bringing together a robust buy-side and sell-side, there’s just so much opportunity to innovate together.”
4. Team talent
“The exceptional talent at Publica. They have a really strong engineering organisation and a really strong leadership team.”
Publica is a five-year-old connected TV ad-serving company that has grown to have employees in LA, New York, London and Paris.
It employs server-side ad insertion, as oppose to playing out ads from client devices themselves.
It built its technology with header bidding from the start. That is the technology that lets publishers entertain bids from multiple demand sources simultaneously, rather than in a “waterfall” fashion, thereby reaping a better yield from a larger auction.
It also unifies bidding via direct sales and programmatic sources.
Today we acquired @getpublica for $220M as IAS continues to transform the future of CTV advertising. It’s the first inning of a long game in CTV. Where the consumers go, the marketers go…it just enables us to really accelerate that CTV opportunity. https://t.co/SsGeDE8xsM pic.twitter.com/TnSeuX0ym9
— Lisa Utzschneider (@Lisa_Utz) August 10, 2021
Utzschneider says IAS – which helps ad buyers around ad fraud, brand safety and suitability, contextual targeting and viewability – is growing fast.
“We are seeing lots of interest in demand from global marketers to partner with IAS, and we’re signing agreements that are two to three years long with some of the major global iconic marketers like Coke, and Nestle, and GSK, Adidas,” she says.
EMarketer estimates that advertisers will invest over $13.4 billion into CTV this year, growing to surpass $24.7 billion by 2024.
Utzschneider says Publica reports publishers using its platform have seen on average a 30% lift in yield for their CTV inventory.
The buy gives IAS access to Publica’s unified auction, over-the-top (OTT) header bidding for programmatic buying, audience management, campaign management, server-side ad insertion (SSAI), ad pod automation, and advanced analytics.
IAS’ feature set already includes a verification solution for global invalid traffic (IVT) and viewability across programmatic.
]]>Integral Ad Science is one of the providers and its CEO Lisa Utzschneider expects that other social platform will follow, responding to intense marketers’ demands.
This was one of the topics covered in this podcast episode of the #BeetCast, guest hosted by industry consultant Matt Prohaska.
They covered the increasing importance of verification around contextual marketing, and the battle in combatting a rise in fraud around CTV.
Lisa is one the most accomplished leaders in digital media. She started out 20 years at Microsoft where she spearheaded monetization at MSN, moved on to help build the Amazon advertising business and then to Yahoo where she was Chief Revenue Officer. She joined IAS two years ago.
Thanks Lisa and Matt for a fascinating chat.
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Optik, a Transunion company.
]]>In this video discussion with John Montgomery, GroupM’s Global EVP of Brand Safety, Integral Ad Science (IAS) CEO Lisa Utzschneider reveals new research showing advertisers’ keyword blocking of news stories containing “coronavirus” and “COVID-19” is subsiding.
“In the US, we’ve seen an 88% decrease in keyword-blocking of those specific keywords, the volume of blocking, and, in the UK, we’ve seen a 77% decrease,” she says.
“Over the past few weeks, we’ve definitely seen a decrease and marketers becoming more comfortable running their brands adjacent to COVID content.”
What may be a turning of the corner is happening for several reasons…
Alarmed by advertisers shunning news sites early in the pandemic, publishers, broadcasters, agencies and industry bodies have worked hard to convince them it may be futile and destructive.
IAS’ Utzschneider says publishers have sent her “unsolicited thank-yous” for having published research and information which may be changing advertisers’ minds.
“Education is critically important,” Montgomery says. “When we did some research, our team did a research of 80 of our largest clients, what those clients came back with is that 92% of them are now either not blocking news at all.
“Or, if they’re using any form of keyword-avoidance, they’re doing it in a sophisticated way by combining the really grim news with something like ‘COVID-avoidance’, maybe ‘COVID-avoidance’ and ‘death toll’, or ‘refrigerated trucks’, or ‘miracle cure’ or anything like that.”
U.S. Ad Market Plummets 35% In April, Second Consecutive Month Of Faltering Demand: Ad demand fell 35% year-over-year in April, marking its lowest point since MediaPost and Standard… https://t.co/JHlO94rH1y @mp_joemandese
— Digital Content Next – #StayHome + Save Lives (@DCNorg) May 21, 2020
Deeper software-based analysis of news stories and even videos is now able to provide more refined cues about the real meaning of content – its context.
Making these cues available through buying platforms, for “contextual targeting”, is helping advertisers continue to buy against some kinds of COVID-19 content without resorting to a blanket ban.
“We would never advise a marketer to completely block news,” says IAS’ Utzschneider. “The technology that is available for marketers today, it’s incredibly sophisticated.
“Marketers can get much more precise about the type of content that they’re comfortable their brands running next to and the type of content that they’re not comfortable running next to.”
Advertisers’ belief that consumers would view them negatively if placed against coronavirus content may not only be wrong – it may be a missed opportunity. Audience research is piling up that shows advertisers perhaps don’t need to dodge coronavirus news at all. An April study conducted by IAS found:
“Consumers are much more open to seeing ads from healthcare verticals or education and a lot less engaged with verticals like travel,” IAS’ Utzschneider says.
This situation is not one where either ‘more’ or ‘less’ keyword blocking should be universally adopted as the only protective measure, it is one that highlights the need for precision in guiding a brand toward or away from content corresponding with that brand’s values & identity pic.twitter.com/TnuPI08Wh6
— Integral Ad Science (@integralads) March 18, 2020
So, GroupM’s Montgomery hopes the situation may be heading “in the right direction”. The brand safety leader at the world’s largest media-buying agency laments the situation the earliest throes of the “brand safety” outcry has sowed.
“We’ve become so sensitive to controversial information,” he says. “There’s been sort of a deep concern about appearing next to anything controversial or perhaps even bad news.
“Consumers in the main don’t perceive a brand in any negative way if they appear next to controversial news. Sometimes, the harder the news the better, because there’s a longer dwell time.”
Several groups are trying to force the “brand safety” debate toward an understanding that all news output is “brand-safe” but where a more refined understanding of news context can give finer cues about whether distinct content is “brand-suitable”.
Local news is dying. Advertisers can help. We offer some suggestions. @taxidodger @unitedfornews @internews https://t.co/70TmbPWji6
— Jennifer Cobb (@jjunecobb) May 4, 2020
All of this is not only important to marketers, which are searching for the best way to spend money to reach audiences, but also to news publishers and broadcasters.
They have been walloped by declining ad revenue and diminishing ad rates during the pandemic, pushing many to make large-scale staff reductions and to offer advertising at knock-down rates.
The threat to democracy from the death of news organizations has, which was already playing out, has been ratcheted-up.
Montgomery says he hopes initiatives from the likes of Local Media Consortium, Worldwide Association of Newspapers and the SSP TripleLift can help plug tens of thousands of local media sources into the programmatic ad supply chain, helping to bring money back to publishers.
“We’re trying to re-monetize this so that we can make sure that as many of the other newspapers, and particularly the local newspapers, survive the COVID crisis,” Montgomery says.
This video is part of a series titled Brand Suitability at the Forefront, presented by Integral Ad Science. For more segments from the series, please visit this page.
]]>But publishers may be able to soften the blow and give advertisers what they want by using their own tools.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Chance Johnson, chief revenue officer of Integral Ad Science (IAS), says: “For publishers specifically, we’ve created tools that will allow them to proactively target ads and inventory away from particular advertisers that are sensitive to a specific piece of content.
“It’s allowing them to curate their ads and optimize their ads in a way that is going to drive the most yield, allow them to monetize the most impressions and, most importantly, avoid any unnecessary blocking of ads.”
Johnson advocates the use of “cognitive semantic technology”, which can peer deep in to the inner meaning of content, making it available as richer indicators to buy ads against.
That is part of the growth of “contextual” ad targeting.
In November, IAS acquired ADmantX, whose semantic analysis software aims to create, from stories, corresponding flags for emotions and sentiments, plus for entities contained in stories, which can be leveraged by media buyers and sellers.
“There’s a very big difference between a story that’s talking about something negative like the increased risk of increased death toll if we open states too early, versus a really positive and uplifting story about a frontline medical workers and the sacrifices they’re making,” Johnson adds.
“Our responsibility is to give our customers the ability to make that distinction, and align against the content that they feel is right for their particular brand.”
But audience research is piling up that shows advertisers perhaps don’t need to dodge coronavirus news at all. An April study conducted by IAS found:
Consumers’ views seem at odds with those of brands. In a March marketer survey from IAS:
Still, IAS’ Johnson understands brands’ quest for appropriate environments. He just see s distinction between the idea of “brand safety” and what he calls “brand suitability”.
He says “brand safety” is a binary concept, wherein advertisers will want to swerve content like hate speech or adult material. But “brand suitability” is more nuanced and, so requires a deeper understanding of content.
“The current economic and pandemic situation that we’re in, it’s certainly accelerated the adoption of brand suitability for a number of different reasons,” Johnson says.
“We’ve seen increased demand. We expect that to continue, especially as advertisers get much more focused and refining and getting precise about what’s appropriate for them.”
This video is part of a series titled Brand Suitability at the Forefront, presented by Integral Ad Science. For more segments from the series, please visit this page.
]]>Initially putting investment on hold during the initial days, advertisers are finding that news is increasingly providing “positive associations” says Joe Barone, Managing Partner, Brand Safety, US at GroupM in this interview Beet.TV
CTV Lacks Transparency
Barone sees the CTV ecosystem as troubled by a lack of transparency, multiple technology platforms along wiht fraud and piracy. He says the industry needs to run exclusion and exclusion lists. “We need know where we are running,” he demands. He calls for the industry adoption of bundle ID’s.
This video is part of a series titled Brand Suitability at the Forefront, presented by Integral Ad Science. For more segments from the series, please visit this page.
]]>That is kneecapping the revenue of many news publishers at a precarious moment, and threatening to make many brands invisible. But Linda Utzschneider thinks it doesn’t have to be this way.
The CEO of Integral Ad Science (IAS) – a vendor of brand safety, viewability, ad fraud and other software – says some such tools allow more refined control than simply blocking keywords.
“We absolutely do not advise completely blocking the news category,” Utzschneider says in this video interview with Beet.TV. “We work with marketers and say, ‘Hey, you know what? We could actually, based on the sentiment of the content, be able to segment out content that’s more positive or hero-related content tied to coronavirus’.”
Rather than simply blacklist all stories about “coronavirus”, for example, Utzschneider advocates a deeper inspection of what kinds of pandemic stories may be good placement opportunities.
That alternative comes at the intersection of brand safety lists, with tools that can peer deep in to the inner meaning of content, making them available as richer indicators.
In her case, that means ADmantX, which IAS acquired in November, whose semantic analysis software aims to create, from stories, corresponding flags for emotions and sentiments, plus for entities contained in stories, which can be leveraged by media buyers and sellers.
“We’re able now, through machine learning and AI, to do page-level analysis, get down to the content, the context of the page, and then also the sentiment of the content,” Utzschneider adds.
“With all of those different layers, we’re able to offer a precision technology for advertisers so they can really think through and plan for the type of content they want to be adjacent to, in particular related to coronavirus.”
We’re proud to partner with @AdCouncil to share public service announcements about stopping the spread of COVID-19. Thanks to @martyswant @Forbes for covering this important initiative. https://t.co/aJqFsBo1g3
— Lisa Utzschneider (@Lisa_Utz) April 1, 2020
Last week, Comscore, announcing its own “epidemic brand safety filter” that lets ad buyers swerve virus news, said 22% to 30% of all ad impressions were appearing in coronavirus-related content.
Traffic to news sites is booming. But many advertisers are pausing on news sites, whilst coronavirus content specifically is now being widely blacklisted by ad buyers, amid consternation that all kinds of virus news are falling on the negative side of “brand safety” definitions.
IAB and Digital Content Next have called on advertisers to cease the practice.
In one of latest news reports on the matter, The Wall Street Journal says half of all desktop and mobile ad impressions across news sites in its Dow Jones family stable were being deemed unsafe for brands to advertise against by Oracle-owned Moat, an IAS competitor. The paper also quotes another such vendor, DoubleVerify, as urging advertisers not to block such keywords on trusted news sites.
In a blog post, IAS said keyword blocking is at the discretion of advertisers and their agencies, advising against “a blanket approach or overzealous use of keywords”.
Speaking with Beet.TV, John Montgomery, the brand safety EVP at the world’s largest media-buying agency, GroupM, urged ad buyers to use enhanced features of such tools rather than bluntly blocking, because news is n effective channel in which to be seen.
This situation is not one where either ‘more’ or ‘less’ keyword blocking should be universally adopted as the only protective measure, it is one that highlights the need for precision in guiding a brand toward or away from content corresponding with that brand’s values & identity pic.twitter.com/TnuPI08Wh6
— Integral Ad Science (@integralads) March 18, 2020
Results of a survey published this week by Utzschneider’s IAS show:
Beet.TV has been following the topic:
This interview was conducted remotely, using Zoom.
]]>Integral Ad Science (IAS), a vendor of digital ad verification software services, has this year beta-tested a new tool aiming to apply similar processes to connected TV ads. Now the new system is gearing up for a full launch.
Earlier this year, IAS began working with Verizon to detect fraudulent ads across eight connected TV ad suppliers including CBS Interactive and NBCUniversal.
“We’ve since opened up that beta to more advertisers here in the US for the remainder of the year, and then start of Q1 of 2020 we’ll be opening up for a full product both with advertisers and then also opening up the supply to programmatic,” says IAS CEO Lisa Utzschneider in this video interview with Beet.TV.
What is connected TV ad fraud?
In ad fraud, fraudsters trick advertisers in to buying inventory that does not really exist. That tends especially to happen when demand for new ad inventory out-strips supply, is exacerbated due to a lack of standardization in the various delivery mechanisms and apps for OTT services, and is potentially more lucrative due to the higher rates commanded for TV exposure.
“It’s similar to what we’ve seen in the digital landscape over the past 10 years that IAS has been around,” says IAS’ CEO. “Where the consumers go, marketers go, and where the marketers go, the money goes – that’s where the fraudsters are.
“Given the enormous opportunity ahead of us with connected TV, when you open up the supply, and especially when the supply gets open up via programmatic, there will be fraud.
“A good example of that is device spoofing where fraudsters come and they mimic as a device just to sort of mess around with both the consumer, marketer and publishers.”
In a Q3 2018 study, Pixalate found that 19% of worldwide OTT impressions were invalid
This video is part of a series of interviews conducted during Advertising Week New York, 2019. This series is co-production of Beet.TV and Advertising Week. The series is sponsored by Roundel, a Target company. Please see more videos from Advertising Week right here.
]]>Integral Ad Science’s (IAS) new CEO says she is focused on differentiation, on Internet TV and on big platforms.
“Many marketers are asking IAS, ‘Hey, get in the OTT game’, says Lisa Utzschneider, who was Yahoo’s chief revenue officer until its acquisition by Verizon, in this video interview with Beet.TV. We’re currently in alpha right now with a major wireless carrier and six broadcasters.”
The traditional world of TV never suffered from concerns over the whether TV ads were truly seen. But arguably that was because analog TV had poor means to even measure viewership at all.
So, why exactly does Utzschneider think over-the-top internet TV needs ad verification?
“There are over a hundred million households in the US alone that’s viewing content via OTT,” she says. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done both in terms of putting together the standards on how we will verify.”
But, for IAS, it’s not all about OTT. Utzschneider suggests internet video remains a focus. She suggests there is a big opportunity in providing Google and Facebook the third-party verification they need to allay their own advertisers’ concerns about what is really going on under the hood.
“With Google, we’re deeply integrated,” she adds. “We’re working on a joint product roadmap and showing that we’re properly resourced. Particularly with YouTube and how much marketers invest in running ads in YouTube, they want to know that there is an independent third-party verification company verifying that the ads that they’re running is running next to brand-safe content.
“If we detect high-risk content is running, we have a feedback loop back to YouTube to alert them and let them know. And then YouTube can make the decision whether or not they want to demonetize that ad and not run it.”
This video is part of the Beet.TV preview series titled “The Road to Cannes.” The series is sponsored by 4INFO. Please visit this page for additional segments.
]]>In this video interview with Beet.TV, Integral Ad Science CEO Scott Knoll says brands are pushing for a more granular understanding of which inventory is deemed viewable at different watch lengths.
That is because different brands create ads with different focal durations for different campaigns.
“Brands tend to right away understand that viewability is not binary,” Knoll says. “We can’t say it’s good or bad, it’s in view, it’s not in view, that time is a really critical element.
“In Europe, there are more brands who are adopting this, and we have dozens of brands here who have decided that MRC standard is not enough. The Group M standard doesn’t fit their needs, and they’ve created their own custom standard that’s specific to not just their advertising, but in some cases actually their creative.”
Knoll walks Beet.TV through an example of why a brand would want more.
“Let’s say they have a campaign coming out,” he explains. “They do some tests. They recognize that their video is optimized to eight seconds, so then what they’ll do is, on every buy, they’ll measure how many seconds the ad was in view for, and they try to optimize to 8 seconds.
“So, they find the publishers who are giving them eight seconds or more, they work through programmatic where they can use signals from us or other companies to actually buy based on a high probability that they’re going to get eight seconds of view.
“Most of the market today is just counting it as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and these smart brands who are ahead of the curve are actually figuring out a lot of extra value for the same amount of money.”
This interview is part of a series titled Advertising Reimagined: The View from DMEXCO 2018, presented by Criteo. Please find more videos from the series here.
]]>The Lab’s first SDK is a takeover of an initiative originally conceived and developed by Integral Ad Science. Called the Mobile Verification Open-Source Software Development Kit, it will help app publishers set up monitoring of in-app ads without relying on multiple SDKs from multiple ad platforms or other partners, as Marketing Land reports.
“It’s our very first tool that we’re putting onto our repository that IAS and other members of the community have given to us to open source,” Gombert explains during an interview with Beet.TV at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting. “We should have tools for everyone to use in our ecosystem…to help get them to the same level on the framework side of our business.”
The open RTB protocol upgrade is aimed at being more transparent and engineering-focused, according to Gombert. “We had a summit in Boston two days ago and we talked about a brave new world for advertising and a way to think about open RTB as a framework for the next generation of ads and exchanges,” she adds.
The new version will address user happiness and transparency, supply chain economics and supply chain transparency, says Gombert, who is both SVP of Technology & Ad Ops for the IAB and GM of the IAB Tech Lab.
Declaring that the problem in digital right now is that “the focus on user experience is just not there,” she says the fledgling Coalition for Better Ads wants to create a methodology “to improve user experience and hopefully prevent ad blocking in our world.”
The Coalition’s near term output hopefully will yield “a global realization of the user experience problem in our industry and adoption of the standards,” says Gombert.
Asked to comment on server-to-server technology and its impact on user experience, she explains that while it’s a topic of much conversation of late, there are ways to optimize in-browser technology. As for header bidding, the technique that enables publisher to surface the best offers for their ad inventory, Gombert says the Tech Lab is considering a standard for it even as there are different points of view on the subject.
“Google has its own solution, which is not header bidding, which is equally as important,” says Gombert. “I think we need to think about everyone’s technology stack and talk about what would work for the publishers and consumers.”
This video is part of a series produced at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting. Beet.TV’s coverage of this event is sponsored by Index Exchange. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
]]>In this interview, our panelists discuss lingering fraud issues, vendor challenges and the multi-dimensional value of video…
Cross-platform brand safety
Brand safety on web may have been improved by software, but is still a problem on mobile and new platforms like connected TV, according to Integral Ad Science general manager Kevin Lenane.
“We can now measure viewability in in-app and mobile,” he said. “But there’s probably I would say generally less being done about brand safety on mobile and other things, you know, there’s fraud models on mobile now, too, but it’s definitely newer than web, and then if you look at connected TV, it’s wow, we have even less there.”
Vendor value
Many ad-tech vendors are taking too much and not providing enough value, according to FreeWheel’s agency VP James Rothwell.
“I think there’s a lot of extraction of value without actually the creation of value there,” he said. “So we need to find ways—better ways—of bringing the buyer and seller together to ensure that they are using partners all the way through that value chain.”
Video’s broad context
Video advertising can be valuable in its own right but can also provide a boost to other aspects of a marketing campaign, according to Mediaocean’s product VP Cordie DePascale.
“I’d look at TV, I’d look at video, I’d look at display, and I’d find ways to show that when I package it all up together in a certain way, they lift each other up,” he said. “We kind of have to get people comfortable with that idea and bring the comfort across from what they do in TV today.”
This panel was chaired by Furious Corp founder Ashley J. Swartz.
This panel was conducted at Beet Retreat 2016: The Transformation of Television Advertising, an executive retreat presented by Videology with AT&T AdWorks and the 605. Please find more videos from the event here.
]]>Integral Ad Science, whose technologies help advertisers and agencies understand the viewability and quality of the inventory they are buying, is coming to TV.
“2017’s going to bring a lot of innovation for Integral Ad Science,” says video GM Kevin Lenane. “One of the things we’re really excited about … is the connected TV space and the programmatic TV space, and we will be in that market in 2017.”
Why does Lenane need to measure video viewing on TV? After all, TV is generally considered to be the holy grail of viewability. And TV so far remains untained by the kind of ad fraud practices we have seen in online display and video.
But things are changing.
“Connected TV inventory is generally 100% viewable, and, in some platforms, you actually physically cannot deliver an ad that isn’t 100% viewable,” Lenane concedes. “So why measure viewability?
“We’ve seen new fraud models out there where people activate TVs in the middle of the night. There are just all kinds of things that will pop up as the market gets larger and more lucrative, and so we plan to be there. I think viewability will just be the first step.”
This interview was conducted at Beet Retreat 2016: The Transformation of Television Advertising, an executive retreat presented by Videology with AT&T AdWorks and the 605. Please find more videos from the event here.
]]>Integral Ad Science CEO Scott Knoll says he sees a problem with current implementations of viewability metrics.
“A small percent (of consumers), say 10%, are seeing 90% of the viewable ads,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “It’s a big waste. You’re spending all this money in advertising but you’re not actually telling your story to everyone.
“The industry is going to move from ‘is this ad in-view or not?’ to tying viewbaility data to specific target segments or individuals, to know ‘how long did this consumer see my ad over the life of a campaign, over a quarter, over a year?’.”
Knoll calls that “the consumer ad experience”, something he says brands are fully behind.
The nub of the idea seems to be – forget about time, focus on effect.
This interview was recorded at the I-com Global Forum for Marketing and Data Measurement in Seville, Spain, April 18 to 21. This video is part of a series from the Forum sponsored by Xaxis. Please visit this page for more videos from Seville.
]]>Truth is, that race may already have been won. Integral Ad Science is amongst the outfits saying ad buyers now need more granularity.
“The baseline is, ‘Was my ad viewed by a human, and was it safe?,” Integral Ad Science video GM Kevin Lenane tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “But beyond that is, ‘Is the ad actually being watched?’?
“The difference between ‘watched’ and ‘viewed’ is kind of how we look at impact and quality. We know it’s being viewed by a person – but is it actually being watched?”
Lenane says Integral, which just published its latest, interesting quarterly report on fraudulent ad buys, will be releasing features in Q1 and Q2 to add these kind of impact metrics to basic viewability measurements.
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology. You can find more videos from the session here.
]]>“The key thing is, it’s not a KPI,” Integral Ad Science video GM Kevin Lenane tells session moderator Matt Spiegel of MediaLink in this recorded panel interview. “The equivalent is, I order a cheeseburger and I get the cheeseburger. That’s measuring viewability.”
That means viewability doesn’t account for the actual taste of the cheeseburger – or, in ad terms, whether it actually resonated with viewers. Lenane says advertisers should look beyond the cheeseburger.
“The IAB, the organisation that came up with (viewability), said, ‘This is a starting point’. I don’t know how we got there… it became the standard.”
Lenane says Integral is trying to do things differently: “We’re focused on the metrics of impact beyond the baseline, like in-banner versus in-stream, player size… these are where you’re measuring how good is that burger… is the cheese good, is the meat good, how tasty is it? Those metrics correlate to brand lift.”
In fact, viewable ads may be played but they may not really hit the mark of effectiveness, Lenane claims.
In what he portrays as a worrying development, he says over half of pre-roll ads aren’t even served in the supporting context of an actual piece of video content – something which would annoy users and which many advertisers aren’t even aware of.
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology. You can find more videos from the session here.
]]>In this previously published video, company CEO Scott Knoll talks about how the company identifies various forms of ad fraud including non-human ad impressions.
More on today’s news reported in the Wall Street Journal.
]]>
“People who create bots realize that now advertisers are focused on finding ads that are in-view,” says Integral Ad Science CEO Scott Knoll.
“So the bots purposely scroll an ad in to view … or sit through the whole pre-roll video or hit ‘play’ and watch the video. They’re smart enough to try and back in to the metrics advertisers are using. In a lot of cases, money to buy that ad is wasted.”
Integral uses a metric called True Advertising Quality Score, or TRAQ, to measure effectiveness of ad impressions beyond “viewability”, Knoll ads.
]]>The amount of fraud is increasing, though it’s hard to pinpoint how much traffic is fraudulent. Nonetheless, fraudsters are increasingly relying on botnets to create the appearance of legitimate traffic on web sites. Ads can then be sold via ad exchanges on fake sites as a result of this fraudulent traffic. “Botnets are new and getting attention, and they direct people to a web site and get credit, and inventory is purchased and changes hands but no human saw it. Bots purposely scroll the ad into view for a long period of time to make sure the whole ad is seen and then stop there. Every metric we use in the industry, the bots are figuring out how to back into.”
The level of fraud varies with sites. “If a site has fraud that doesn’t mean it’s a bad site. A lot of times a site doesn’t know it has it. We see it across the board. But where the money is made is where we need to stop it,” he says. That’s usually in fake sites that are monetized with layers of money laundering surrounding fake ads, he says. Integral Ad Science aims to provide metrics for buyers and sellers to use to understand how to buy and sell ads in this environment.
]]>