Measurement

The mobile app Ibotta, which offers users cash back on purchases from retail and brand partners, is turning its receipt verification system into an in-store attribution tool. Ibotta users can link a loyalty card account or upload a picture of a store receipt to get cash back on products for which it offers discounts. But […]

Ad tech has a transparency problem. Some are pointing to blockchain as a possible answer. It’s fairly easy for fraudsters or an ill-intentioned party to weasel their way into a programmatic transaction, said Ken Brook, CEO and co-founder of metaX, a blockchain-based ad tech company that launched into beta on Tuesday. “The supply chain is […]

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 […]

Speaking Thursday at the ANA Media Conference, Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard was pleased that Facebook and Google had agreed to independent MRC audits, but he emphasized that the audits are only the first steps toward improving the media supply chain. “It’s not enough to accept [audit pledges] until the audits are […]

Roku generated nearly $400 million in 2016 revenue, mostly from standard hardware sales around its devices. But $100 million of its revenue was attributed to Roku’s media licensing and advertising businesses, which are expected to be its biggest growth drivers. The real MVP of Roku’s media and licensing segment may be the set-top box manufacturer’s […]

The Dentsu Aegis Network is testing a cross-screen measurement system developed by video platform YuMe, released Wednesday, which maps connected TV (CTV) IDs to Nielsen panels. The system gives TV planners access to audience measurement based on demographic breakouts across multiple app publishers through a partnership with Nielsen. Dentsu’s digital video investment team wants a […]

Alain Portmann and Oscar Garza will speak about last click attribution at Programmatic IO on April 5 in San Francisco. Last-click attribution may never die. Although digital multitouch attribution (MTA) pioneers like Visual IQ, Google’s Adometry and AOL’s Convertro hit the market more than a decade ago, last-click remains the prevailing measurement model. Big brands and network agencies still tend […]

ComScore had a rough go of it in 2016, with fierce competition from Nielsen and other media validation companies, culminating in its delisting from the Nasdaq this month. But CEO Gian Fulgoni also expressed disappointment with the performance of comScore’s digital ad measurement tool, Validated Campaign Essentials (vCE), during a corporate update on Friday. Though […]

Gracenote on Thursday rolled out its first update under new owner Nielsen, which bought it for $560 million in December. The offering is an entertainment database that combines its video, music and sports metadata offerings. The company is betting metadata will play a larger part in media monetization. Gracenote tags the programming content it tracks […]

TV viewership is fragmenting faster than the advertising industry’s ability to adapt to it all. And advertisers bracing for the 2017 upfront season aren’t entirely satisfied with the big measurement companies. Consider Nielsen’s delayed Total Content Ratings product and comScore’s accounting snafu and anticipated delisting. “People are in dispute about what the measurement process should be,” […]

Conagra, which owns brands like Chef Boyardee and Orville Redenbacher’s, is no newbie at negotiating for better ad quality. In 2014, it started using comScore’s digital ad effectiveness tools to negotiate delivery guarantees with publishers to ensure display inventory was in view and seen by humans. But ConAgra wants both publishers and advertisers to work […]

Facebook will be audited by the Media Rating Council. (Pause for dramatic effect.) The company said Friday in a blog post that it plans to commit to an independent audit by the MRC in order to verify the accuracy of the measurement it delivers to its ad partners. Facebook had reportedly started talking to the […]

Direct mail has always performed well for Citibank. But like most advertisers, if the company wants to push more dollars into digital, top brass expects marketing to prove the impact on short-term revenue growth. With digital, it can be technically easier to prove – in near real time – what drove a conversion rather than […]

Facebook is activating marketing-mix modeling across Instagram, Audience Network and Facebook proper. On Tuesday, Facebook rolled out a portal that lets advertisers pull campaign data for cross-channel measurement. Only aggregated data will be available across ad formats – reach and volume of impressions by week and geographic area. But it represents another chink in the garden […]

Chinese advertisers want viewability standards – but the country’s unique media landscape offers unusual challenges. “There is definitely a growing concern among advertisers here about wasted media budget and the transparency of their media buying,” said Martin Zhang, CEO and founder of Shanghai-based verification firm Adbug. Zhang is also chair of a Mobile Marketing Association China […]

Brad Smallwood, VP of marketing science at Facebook, will take the stage Jan. 19 to talk all things measurement at Industry Preview in New York City. Facebook is at a crossroads in the way it relates to the media, thinks about monetization and measures ads. Right before Advertising Week, Facebook admitted to what became a […]

Instagram will allow ads in its Stories section, the company said Wednesday. It also unveiled brand measurement tools. “Over the first holidays with Stories we’ve gotten a chance to peek into what people do when they’re home and with their families, at a level of depth and intimacy we haven’t usually had with Instagram,” said […]

This is the latest installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read previous interviews with talent from Mindshare, Mediavest | Spark, Razorfish, Essence, INNOCEAN, Clear Channel Outdoor and Placed. Patricio Jaramillo is in a serious relationship with data. “My relationship with my wife is first, and then with data,” the […]

CES has always been about TV, and 2017 was no exception. Displays got a whole lot sharper and devices got a whole lot thinner. But the TV advancements most relevant to marketers and advertisers revolve not around the hardware but the software, which enables addressable ads and better measurement. To be fair, CES isn’t exactly […]

GroupM exec John Montgomery has been to CES for nearly a decade, but this is his first year attending as EVP of global brand safety. So what’s a brand safety guy doing at a consumer electronics show? “To understand brand safety, I need to understand where media is going, particularly new data innovations,” he said. […]

TV buyers are used to transacting on GRPs and Nielsen ratings, while digital buyers purchase targeted impressions. That has complicated the way advertisers plan, buy and measure their emerging cross-screen campaigns. Several companies have built tools to address the problem, but many have sold brand-direct or by way of the trading desk. RTL Group–backed VideoAmp […]

Nielsen intends to acquire Gracenote, a Tribune-owned company specializing in audio and video content recognition technology, for $560 million, the company confirmed on Tuesday. Gracenote will operate under Nielsen’s “Watch” business – the side of the house that measures audiences – and the acquisition is expected to close Q1 2017. If it goes through, Nielsen will […]

Advertisers get a little antsy when they see headlines like “More Facebook Measurement Problems!” – but the sky didn’t fall when Facebook began what’s turned into an ongoing measurement mea culpa. “I don’t have a single client that doubts the social and economic performance and importance of Facebook and all of their platforms,” said Rob Norman, […]

Another independent attribution solution is off the market. SAP said Wednesday that it had purchased Abakus, a move that puts it further into the paid media arena. Terms were not disclosed. Abakus’ attribution system is unique since it applies game theory to forecast scenarios that influence media buying and optimization. It also uses split-funnel attribution […]

FuturePlay Games relies primarily on advertising to monetize. But it had a devil of a time attributing ad revenue to specific campaigns. “We knew that an ad had been watched on a device, but we didn’t know how much money we got back from it,” said Camilo Fitzgerald, a games analyst at the Helsinki-based game […]

While the online advertising trade groups have created anti-fraud programs and exchanges have instituted inventory standards, fraud is still on the rise. AdExchanger reached out to some of the people in the trenches about where the digital ad tech and media ecosystem stands now and how progress can be made. Click below for their responses. […]

Despite skyrocketing mobile traffic and climbing mobile conversion rates, British airline Monarch was struggling to determine precisely what was or wasn’t working for mobile media buys. “We persistently got all the data in and still faced the question: What about mobile?” said Robert Foulkes, senior marketing manager for the low-cost airline. Monarch was among the […]

Beacons started out as a solution in search of a problem. And now some beacon providers are companies in search of a home. On Monday, mobile ad platform The Mobile Majority acquired geolocation beacon company Gimbal, a spinoff of Qualcomm. In June, location data company Verve Mobile bought beacon provider Roximity almost exactly one year […]

Attribution isn’t perfect. Far from it. But perfection isn’t what the industry should be aiming for. “If you wait for the end state, you won’t have a business for 10 years and by that time the world will have moved on,” said Pravin Chandiramani, Simulmedia’s SVP of data strategy, speaking at a measurement and attribution […]

Ad networks catch a lot of flak as conduits of bad traffic from shady publishers. “It is true that some bad players intentionally sell fraudulent traffic and that other players are just turning a blind eye,” said Asaf Greiner, CEO and founder of fraud detection company Protected Media. “But there are also others working very […]