Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake in ad verification vendor Integral Ad Science. Terms were not disclosed. IAS detects ad fraud by scanning billions of insertions from both buy and sell sides, searching for anomalies. It also assesses whether individual impressions are fraudulent or not. Industry insiders had wondered about […]
The odds are stacked against ad tech companies that go public. But Integral Ad Science CEO Scott Knoll wants to buck that trend. Among a trio of leading verification companies, it’s the only one left that hasn’t taken an exit. Oracle bought Moat in April 2017 and bolted on brand-safety tool Grapeshot a year later […]
Publishers are getting ensnared in the filters used by many advertisers to combat the YouTube brand safety crisis. Earlier this year, many brands found their ads running next to offensive content on the video platform, prompting marketers and their agencies to enlist third-party monitoring. Now publishers as a whole are feeling the effects. The filters […]
MoPub is getting very cozy with its viewability vendors. On Thursday, the Twitter-owned mobile ad exchange released the latest version of its SDK, bundled with viewability support from Integral Ad Science and Moat. MoPub’s SDK is integrated with just shy of 50,000 apps. As the buy side bangs the drum on independent verification and uniform […]
The drumbeat of blockchain industry news continues this week with the launch of AdLedger Consortium, a blockchain-enabled online advertising group backed by MadHive, a blockchain ad tech startup, IBM, Integral Ad Science and Tegna’s OTT ad subsidiary Premion. As with other initiatives, like Comcast’s fledgling Blockchain Insights Platform, the AdLedger Consortium is still in the […]
Oracle’s acquisition of digital ad measurement firm Moat late Tuesday could put pressure on Nielsen to snap up one of the remaining independent measurement companies like Integral Ad Science or DoubleVerify. “How this will impact media currency folks like Nielsen is a bit hard to say,” said Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, a TV platform […]
Oracle will acquire digital measurement firm Moat extending its marketing and data clouds’ abilities to provide digital advertising analytics to advertising clients and publishers, the company revealed Tuesday. [Read the release]. Deal terms were not disclosed. Moat will join the Oracle Data Cloud, which houses its Datalogix and BlueKai acquisitions. “Moat has grown its attention […]
Viewability vendors, including Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify and Moat, are banding together in an uneasy alliance to tackle in-app viewability using open-source software – but the problem is far from solved. “The spirit of the open-source initiative is a good thing,” said Moat CEO Jonah Goodhart. “It’s not comprehensive measurement, though.” Opening The Way In […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Scott Knoll, CEO and president at Integral Ad Science. When you look at the evolution of digital advertising, it makes sense that viewability has become a leading metric and top […]
Welcome to episode No. 6 of AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Scott Knoll was named CEO of Integral Ad Science five years ago, when ad verification mostly served to ameliorate brand safety concerns. Then the twin terrors of fraud and viewability came along and recast the programmatic marketplace in terms of […]
Facebook admitted additional measurement errors Wednesday, along with policy and organizational changes meant to narrow the trust gap between marketers and the mobile world’s leading ad platform. The news comes less than two months after Facebook disclosed that it had been overstating video engagement results, prompting backlash from agencies and concern from other digital media […]
While “programmatic technology” has come a long way, many longtime players in the space are now reckoning with the term. AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley penned op eds about the “death of programmatic.” Rubicon Project SVP of market development Jay Sears also has acknowledged the limitations of the terminology. AdExchanger reached out to ad tech executives, some […]
As fraudsters get smarter, anti-fraud players must evolve to put up a worthy fight. To scale its fraud detection capabilities, viewability and verification measurement vendor Integral Ad Science (IAS) has acquired bot detection company Swarm. Terms of the deal, which was announced Friday, were not disclosed. “Fraud is not going away, it’s getting more sophisticated,” […]
Mobile viewability is going through its awkward adolescent phase. There’s no official standard yet – the Media Rating Council (MRC) is planning to circulate a document for public comment in the next few weeks – and vendors are still tinkering with their methods. Which can lead to confusion around implementation, measurement-induced headaches and wonky reporting. “Everyone is […]
Integral Ad Science on Thursday rolled out pre-bid viewable segments for video that will let advertisers target against different viewability thresholds. MediaMath is the first demand-side platform (DSP) to adopt Integral’s new pre-bid segments. Rather than bidding based on historical data, Integral’s pre-bid viewability segments help marketers fine-tune their bids before the fact. So instead of […]
Video platform TubeMogul sees itself as a bastion for brand advertisers and, beginning in April, it’s putting its money where its mouth is. The company will roll out a Non-Human Traffic Credit Program, an automatic make good on all video impressions it buys on the open exchange that have been identified as fake or fraudulent. In […]
Just because an ad is “in-view,” that doesn’t mean it’s effective. On the contrary, time spent is often a better indicator of ad effectiveness than percentage of pixels in-view on a page. That’s according to a new viewability study from Interpublic Group (IPG) and measurement firm Integral Ad Science. The report, “Putting Science Behind The […]
“On TV and Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in programmatic TV and video. Today’s column is written by Kevin Lenane, general manager of video at Integral Ad Science. If you regularly read digital advertising news, you may be forgiven for believing that marketers have embraced video advertising in a monumental way. In […]
Beyond knowing whether an ad was viewed and for how long, marketers want to verify viewability percentages against key audience segments, which is the basis of a new alliance between Nielsen and Integral Ad Science (IAS). Although the two companies have partnered since 2012, they have now expanded the scope of their relationship to offer […]
Media quality verification company Integral Ad Science revealed Friday a new $67 million investment. The round is a mix of debt and equity financing, which CEO Scott Knoll described as an “optimal” blend for the 6-year-old company. Knoll also said the company’s revenue will surpass $100 million this year. The company had raised about $49.8 […]
It’s time for the next can of worms: mobile viewability. And the mobile ad vendors are already on the scene. Less than two weeks after the Media Rating Council (MRC) issued its long-awaited interim guidance on mobile viewability measurement, three separate mobile media sellers – Millennial Media, 33Across and JUICE Mobile – have announced their intention to offer a 100% […]
The only certainties in life are death, taxes and multiple definitions of “viewability.” The Media Rating Council (MRC) defines a video ad as viewable if half of that ad is in-view for a minimum of two consecutive seconds, but others, like media agency GroupM, are demanding all pixels be in-view with the sound on for at least 50% […]
Ad verifier Integral Ad Science has acquired video analytics startup Veenome in a deal the two companies claim will kick video measurement up a notch. Veenome’s product premise is that advertisers should know the context of the video content around their placement, not simply that they hit their demo targets. Advertisers undoubtedly want to know […]
The divide between publishers and advertisers around viewability sharpened during a Tuesday morning panel “Inside The Mind Of The Advertiser,” hosted by analytics provider Integral Ad Science. This wasn’t much of a surprise considering one panelist was Ari Bluman, GroupM’s chief digital investment officer for North America. GroupM has taken a notoriously hardline stance around […]
2014 was the year advertisers collectively asked the question, “How much?” As in, viewability aside, how much ad fraud is actually out there? Some of the numbers bandied about, often by the fraud vendors themselves, were alarming to say the least. A report released by cyber-security startup MdotLabs in October 2013 before it was acquired […]
The rise of automation has made the ad-buying and selling process more informed and efficient, but it’s also provided an outlet for fraudsters to profit. After all, if machines conduct more transactions that used to take place between two humans over the phone, there’s less human oversight. Additionally, ad ops teams, excited by the […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Dan Hill, senior data scientist at Integral Ad Science. How effective was the last ad campaign you worked on? What was the return on investment? Chances are you don’t know. […]
This is the second in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include White Ops, DoubleVerify, Forensiq, Moat, PubChecker and Telemetry. Read last week’s interview with Videology. When it comes to detecting and preventing ad fraud, Integral Ad Science is the middleman. That is, […]
Are you a technology or retail company? If so, you’ve probably got a bigger problem with ad fraud than your CPG or telco counterparts, at least according to Integral Ad Science’s Q2 2014 Industry Report, which includes information from the ad tech companies, exchanges and agencies it works with. So why are verticals like technology […]
When the Media Ratings Council (MRC) last week lifted its advisory against buying and selling display ads based on viewability, it marked a milestone in determining whether an ad was actually seen. However, a number of industry execs say the problem is far from solved in display (let alone video, which still lacks a common […]
