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.

So, why did the media agency make the switch. In this video interview with Beet.TV, GroupM digital ad ops managing partner Joe Barone explains.

“The GroupM 100% standard basically recognises the fact that the dollars moving out of TV are dollars being spent in an environment where you would anticipate sound, you would anticipate the full screen being viewable,’ he says. “So we created a standard.”

Bundled up in concerns over multiple kinds of ad fraud, a couple of years ago, the industry began worrying about rogue publishers invoking ads in spaces where they were not even being seen by audiences but, nevertheless, were triggering an ad buy.

Since then, the industry has done much to address the problem. Now numerous technology vendors offer software that assigns a viewability rating to ad inventory. And that development prompted GroupM to demand 100% viewability or nothing.

“In the last three years, we’ve come a long with with viewability,” Barone adds. “It’s an amazing testimony to the industry coming together and helping our clients achieve what they want, which is having ads seen by real human beings.”

In a world where wholesale advertising targeting data is now commoditised, Barone says the differentiator is the data brans hold about their own customers.

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.

Some in advertising are jumping to act.  “We are closely working with the IAB, 4As and ANA to identify anti-ad-blocking solutions, some of which are directly content-related,” GroupM’s managing partner for digital ad operations, Joe Barone, tells Beet.TV in this video interview.

“Publishers will have the opportunity to promote to their users – ‘If you want this content, you need to turn off the ad blocker or there might be some micropayment involved’.”

This Bloomberg article investigates the possible threat to publishers. The Washington Post has already begun blocking ad-blockers.

In truth, Apple is not launching an ad blocker. Indeed, in iAds, the Cupertino company operates a mobile advertising business of its own. But its extensions will allow Safari users to block content – whether that be mentions of the Republican party, Mail Online in its entirety or, yes, ads. Barone says Safari represents “a big chunk of traffic”. Apple is far from alone – one of the leading developers of ad block software for the desktop has just released an ad-blocking mobile browser.

An early 2014 study put the number of people blocking ads at 4.9%. Later studies seem outlandish, but are nevertheless scaring the horses.

“Some numbers say as much as 16% to 25% of US traffic is blocked,” Barone says. “It was more prevalent outside the US. We’ve reached a point where we can’t no longer say that it isn’t an issue in the US.”

“The real concern is targets like millennials, IT professionals, who are almost invariably using ad blockers.”

This interview is part of a series of videos leading up to the DMEXCO conference in Cologne. The series is presented by 4C Insights + Teletrax.