Measurement

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

NBCUniversal highlighted three streaming-oriented companies it is considering – Conviva, Dumbstruck and Truthset – to create a framework for alternative currencies as it prepares to move away from legacy TV ratings giant Nielsen as the industry’s single currency provider. Kelly Abcarian, NBCU’s EVP of ad measurement and impact, again called for “measurement independence” and for […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Swimming Up-Stream Wall Street is coming around to streaming revenue as a long-term priority. Or, rather, as a source of heavy immediate investment. ViacomCBS has done well enough out of the gate with its Paramount+ streaming service to inspire Wells Fargo to “move from […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is by Jo Kinsella, President, TVSquared. Since the dawn of TV, Nielsen ratings have been the gold standard for marketers. They measured the percentage of a group (e.g., women aged 18-49) or households in a particular designated […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. ​​Amped Up In the wake of Nielsen losing its Media Rating Council accreditation for National and Local TV ratings, measurement companies like Comscore and VideoAmp are maneuvering to take advantage. But when it comes to cross-platform measurement as an alternative currency, VideoAmp has the […]

While diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts to work with minority-owned media companies and hire a diverse workforce are important, brands also need to address a rapidly changing cultural landscape in the United States, according to Isaac Mizrahi, co-president and COO of Miami-based multicultural ad agency Alma Ad Agency (no relation to the fashion designer). […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Reddit And Weep Reddit could clear $350 million in ad revenue this year, double its earnings from 2020. But Reddit’s percent-growth rate is high because revenue is relatively low; Pinterest has a similar number of active users, but earned $1.1 billion in the first […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Contextual Seed The contextual ad tech startup Seedtag raised $40 million, Business Insider reports. The Spanish company plans to add 30 employees and expand its US footprint. Before this round, Seedtag had raised $6 million to date. But contextual targeting is a buzzy category, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Podcast Talk Podcasting has heated up, with big M&A deals in recent years, including Amazon’s acquisition of Wondery for $300 million and Spotify’s $235 million deal for Megaphone. Podcast advertising is forecasted to exceed $2 billion by 2023, according to emarketer, which revised up […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Sting Like A VAB Days after the Media Rating Council stripped Nielsen of its accreditation for National and Local TV Ratings, the Video Advertising Bureau is getting in another dig. The industry group kickstarted Nielsen’s MRC drama in July with a call to remove […]

The Media Rating Council (MRC) may have stripped Nielsen of its National and Local TV accreditation last week, but it also made another significant announcement: It is now defining over-the-top as connected TV. The MRC issued final measurement guidelines on August 30 for CTV. The guidelines, first established with the IAB in 2018 in order […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is by Jean-Christophe Peube, SVP, Analytics & Customer Experience, Smart. Gangsters always follow the money. And today, all roads lead the digital ad fraudsters to the over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV (CTV) space, where prices are high and […]

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 […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. FTC You Next Time The FTC had its Facebook antitrust case dismissed, and recently refiled a new suit. The issue is if Facebook’s competition includes YouTube, Snap, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, Spotify, Hulu and Netflix, then it’s hardly a monopolized market. The FTC’s […]

The Media Rating Council stripped Nielsen of its National TV ratings accreditation Wednesday and formally denied its request for a hiatus after the measurement giant underreported viewers during the pandemic. Nielsen asked the MRC last month to put its accreditation on hold in order to address issues with its panels and focus on the development […]

Facebook has been selling itself short. A bug in Facebook’s measurement system caused Facebook to undercount app install campaigns on iOS 14 via SKAdNetwork (SKAN) for nearly seven months. The bug, which Facebook identified on August 20, only impacted iPhone 12 users that were using the Facebook app. Instagram users and Audience Network partner apps […]

Ad verification and measurement provider DoubleVerify is set to acquire Berlin-based ad tech company Meetrics, a deal that will help fuel the newly minted public company’s global expansion. The all-cash purchase is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021. DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski declined to disclose the sale price. Meetrics was founded in […]

The “big two” in brand safety both went public this year. Over the next two weeks, AdExchanger will publish podcast interviews with both companies’ CEOs: Lisa Utzschneider of Integral Ad Science and Mark Zagorski of DoubleVerify. Utzschneider is up first. We kick off with a discussion of IAS’s acquisition of Publica, an ad server and […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…  

Ad measurement and verification company Method Media Intelligence uncovered a connected TV fraud scheme that it says rakes in $10 million a month in ad revenue. The scheme, dubbed “RapidFire,” feeds counterfeit bid requests into ad exchanges running open auctions for CTV inventory. Like many multimillion video fraud scams, RapidFire targets server-side ad insertion (SSAI) […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. A Shot Across The Bows Comscore is capitalizing on Nielsen’s latest stumble. The company told AdExchanger in an email that it asked to be audited by the MRC for both national and local TV measurement accreditation – a clear dig at Nielsen’s MRC disaccreditation […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Under Pressure NBCUniversal is turning the screws on Nielsen as the MRC considers stripping its National TV rating. Nielsen has long dominated TV ratings but is under fire for underreporting viewers and missing visibility into streaming, mobile and desktop. The Olympics on NBC underwhelmed […]

“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 by Trevor Testwuide, CEO and Co-Founder, Measured. With less customer tracking and online data collection, advertisers are rethinking their ad targeting and attribution methods. The time has come to revisit a measurement approach […]

It must be sweeps week, because TV drama is through the roof. Nielsen lost its Media Ratings Council accreditation for National TV Ratings. The TV currency company calls the loss of the MRC seal of approval a hiatus while it focuses instead on Nielsen ONE, the cross-channel metric expected to launch late next year. Broadcasters […]

Erik Huberman, CEO and founder of marketing consultancy Hawke Media, has some pretty strong – if not outright harsh – words for most media agencies out there: “They’re full of [expletive].” Before founding the Los Angeles-based company in 2014, Huberman launched and sold two commerce companies – Swag of the Month and Ellie – and […]

The past few months have been wild for online advertising. Apple has implemented its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework, and Google announced it would delay the phase-out of third-party cookies in Chrome. A tumultuous ride to be sure. What will be the real impact of these moves on ad tech? AdExchanger examined the Q2 earnings reports of […]

Nielsen’s potential loss of its accreditation by the Media Rating Council as early as this week could fuel greater adoption of alternative measurement currencies that use advanced data and analytics rather than the traditional panel-based surveys the measurement giant is known for. Nielsen has long been accused of undercounting TV viewership. Recently, networks have expressed […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Reddit, Set, Go That plucky startup Reddit picked up $410 million in new venture funding from Fidelity, and may raise as much as $700 million in a new round valuing the company at $10 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company raised about […]

Ad verification company DoubleVerify recently shut down a new type of scheme in connected TV that uses screensavers to hijack streaming devices in order to generate fake ad impressions – even when the screen is off. DoubleVerify estimates that the scam, dubbed “SmokeScreen,” is bilking advertisers out of more than $6 million a month and […]

TV measurement company VideoAmp is bringing on Tony Fagan, a former Google VP of ads data science and engineering, as its first chief technology officer. Fagan joins a number of other C-level hires over the past year, as VideoAmp plots an expansion after a $75 million funding round in May. Since 2020, former Comscore COO […]