Integral Ad Science
- Advertisers are struggling with fraud, measurement, and the need to show business outcomes from their ads that run on connected TVs.
- Ad verification company Integral Ad Science is trying to address those issues with an OTT measurement product it’s testing with a telecom company and six broadcasters, CEO Lisa Utzschneider told Business Insider.
- Utzschneider said the plan is to make the product more widely available by the end of the year.
Ad-tech firms are betting big on connected TV to fuel the next wave of digital advertising and are racing to build technology to power ads in over-the-top apps.
But advertisers struggle with fraud, measurement, and the need to show business outcomes from their ads that run on connected TVs.
Ad-verification company Integral Ad Science helps marketers measure whether an ad was seen by a person and for how long; detects ad fraud; and ensures ads don’t appear next to content that brands consider unsafe. But the technology that advertisers need to run ads in streaming apps differs from the technology used to power desktop and mobile advertising, so ad-tech firms like IAS have to build OTT technology from scratch.
IAS CEO Lisa Utzschneider said that the firm is doing beta-testing with one unnamed wireless carrier and six broadcasters that work with the carrier. Utzschneider wouldn’t give details but said the test covers brand safety, ad fraud and viewability.
The goal is to make an OTT product available to broadcasters during the second half of this year, she said. Because of the technical challenges and a lack of standards in OTT measurement, she stressed that Integral Ad Science is taking its time building out OTT products for marketers.
"We’re spending a lot of time with this particular partner to get it right because it’s a new frontier for all of us," she told Business Insider. "When you spend time with the broadcasters, the common thread throughout acknowledges how important brand safety is."
IAS isn’t alone in trying to solve OTT fraud and brand safety. Ad-tech firms like Pixalate and MadHive have built OTT-specific technology that identifies ad fraud. Both firms estimate that close to 20% of OTT ad requests are fradulent. According to Pixalate, the OTT numbers are in line with desktop and mobile ad fraud. During the third-quarter of 2018, 22% of mobile app impressions and 15% of desktop impressions were found to be fraudulent.
Utzschneider was named CEO in December after executive stints at Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft. She said she’s been focused on staffing up, but wouldn’t say how much.
"We are growing at a healthy clip right now and we’ve built out a top-notch recruiting team, and they are hiring in droves," she said.
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See Also:
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Source: Business Insider – ljohnson@businessinsider.com (Lauren Johnson)