More than a decade ago, a tiny group of vendors emerged to help answer a single marketer question: Did my ad run when and where the publisher promised?
Since then the verification category has steadily expanded into adjacent areas. Was my ad viewable by the end user? Was it served to a live human? And is it safe and/or suitable for my brand?
All of these measurement capabilities are really just features that serve a larger fundamental purpose, DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski says this week on AdExchanger Talks.
“The future of our business is … more about the quality imperative and how it relates to performance,” he said. “Lately a lot of that performance imperative is around brand safety, [but] ultimately it’s about ensuring advertising happens in a high-quality environment because quality ultimately drives performance.”
So if measurement in the future is about tracking the quality of ad exposures as a proxy for ad effectiveness, where do the gaps in “quality measurement” still exist today? Zagorski says future innovation may focus on gathering data about ad interactions.
“When we look at quality, there’s quality of context, there’s quality of implementation,” he says. “The last part of it is what’s the level of engagement? How are people interacting with the ad, and how does that relate to the overall impact of the ad?”
Also in this episode: How widespread is CTV fraud? Are walled gardens playing nice with verification vendors? And what does “brand suitability” mean anyway?
