It’s been a slow year for ad tech M&A.
But on Monday, DoubleVerify (DV) announced plans to acquire Paris-based AI startup Scibids (pronounced sigh-bids, which we sadly realized only after recording the episode) for $125 million. Scibids analyzes all of the data generated by an advertiser’s ad stack, including impression-level information, and uses AI to create custom algorithms for campaign optimization.
Why would DV make this move?
Ad tech Twitter has been bubbling with speculation that DV wants Scibids because it plans to launch its own DSP. But it wouldn’t make sense for DV to compete directly with DSPs and risk hurting those valuable established relationships.
Instead, the acquisition is likely yet another sign that DV has expanded beyond its ad verification and measurement roots to areas such as attention, targeting and prebid optimization.
“There’s been this push across the industry for attention to become a new currency for ad transactions,” says Associate Editor Anthony Vargas on this week’s episode of The Big Story.
If attention metrics eventually replace viewability measurement – which DV built its business on – the company would logically “want to own as much of the attention measurement market as it can,” Anthony says. Not to mention that attention is one way to infer ad outcomes in the absence of third-party cookies.
During the second half of the episode, we turn to how the rise of YouTube TV has resulted in CTV advertisers snagging top-shelf TV content, including ads running against the FIFA Women’s World Cup, at clearance rack prices.
It’s that feeling when you break out your metal detector on the beach and find treasure rather than trash.
But as our Senior Editor James Hercher explains, advertisers don’t care about prestige; they “just want cheap, targeted reach.”
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Here’s a question for advertisers. What’s better: a precisely targeted ad based on your YouTube and Google search history or an ad that mimics the linear TV ad experience, like a commercial for your local Honda dealership or a Saul Goodman-type lawyer?
As James likes to say, sometimes the roughest thing you can do to somebody is hold up a mirror – and that’s what YouTube is doing to the TV industry.
