Dive Brief:
- Software company Mediaocean and analytics firm Moat have joined forces to help marketers ensure they are purchasing only ads that are actually viewable.
- “This deal is absolutely creating a new currency to pay for [Web ads] or to analyze marketing effectiveness,” Mediaocean Chief Executive Bill Wise told the Wall Street Journal.
- As it stands now, many online ad transactions only offer after-the-fact data reconciliation -- meaning marketers don't know until the purchase has been made whether or not ads are viewable.
Dive Insight:
Ad viewability could be the hottest ad topic of 2015, and currently, stakeholders have embarked on a discussion regarding what the standards should be and how the industry can measure whether an ad is actually seen by a real person. The MRC's recommendations are serving as a benchmark, but there are plenty of organizations deviating from those standards.
Ad network Millennial Media is guaranteeing 100% of its mobile ads are viewable for one second -- in an effort to encourage mobile buys from its network. Group M and Facebook have both instituted their own viewability stipulations that are stricter than MRC's as well. The partnership Moat-Mediaocean will take the idea a bit farther by screening ad viewability before the purchase happens -- meaning less ad dollars are wasted.
