Dive Brief:

• Oracle bought Moat, the cloud-based digital measurement firm, per an Oracle press release.
• Moat will become part of the Oracle Data Cloud, but will remain an independent platform providing marketers and publishers measurement, analytics and intelligence for clients including Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, ESPN, Facebook, NBCUniversal, Snapchat, and YouTube.
• "We feel teaming up with a validation technology company to pre-clean data will be table stakes for all digital data companies within the next 12-18 months," said Jason Downie, SVP and GM of Data Solutions, Lotame, in a statement made available to Marketing Dive. "Oracle's Moat acquisition signals that they feel the same."

Dive Insight:

The deal is an indication that the overall value of measurement companies just increased and puts a focus on the value and importance of measurement in the digital ad industry, said Rich Kahn, CEO and founder, eZanga in a second statement provided to Marketing Dive.

The need for independent measurement was put into high relief this January when P&G’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard laid down a gauntlet of sorts at the annual IAB Leadership event stating the consumer packaged goods giant is giving digital ad platforms such as Google, Facebook, Snapchat and other media platforms with walled gardens until the end of the year to adopt Media Rating Council accredited third-party validation or lose P&G’s business.

Since then, there has been a series of announcements around platforms beefing up their independent validation. However, so far these are mostly just that — announcements — with the hard work yet to be done. According to an Ad Age article, Google is the only platform on schedule to meet P&G's requirements by the end of the year. There has been industry pushback as some have voiced that P&G's demands are unfeasible or don't go far enough. Pritchard recently answered by reinforcing that independent validation is a minimum first step to determining the value in digital media.