Solve Media Blog

Great article written by Solve Media’s own Ash Nashed!

Patented solutions have demonstrated over 10X the brand lift and message recall value of traditional digital display advertising.

New York (May 10, 2017) – Haymarket Media, Inc., the U.S. division of Haymarket Media Group, has finalized a partnership with Solve Media, an adtech company with its roots in ad-fraud protection, to offer Solve’s patented suite of type-in ad units to its installed base of advertising partners.

Solve Media’s patented portfolio of branded type-in ad units have a demonstrated brand and message recall lift that is typically over 10 times that of traditional digital display ads and can be used to unlock premium text or video content in desktop and mobile environments. Equally important, Solve Media’s units are not solvable by non-human traffic and help insure that marketers only pay for verified human interactions.

“Haymarket is passionate about serving the information needs of its audiences as well as the marketing needs of its advertising partners, and Solve Media’s type-in ad units are an exciting, highly scalable approach to create effective brand and message lift for our advertisers,” said Cy Caine, Senior Vice President - Strategy & Product Development at Haymarket.“

Solve’s ad units will initially appear on mmm-online.com and will be rolled out on other Haymarket websites on an ongoing basis.

“As a physician and former medical educator, I recognize the power of actively typing a brand message as an effective way for pharma to enhance brand and message recall among healthcare providers” says Dr. Ash Nashed, MD, CEO of Solve Media (and former emergency physician). “We are excited to partner with Haymarket Media Group to offer healthcare marketers our proven portfolio of branded type-in ad solutions within the context Haymarket’s unparalleled editorial environment and unrivaled audience of healthcare practitioners.”

About Solve Media

Solve Media (www.SolveMedia.com) was founded by veteran entrepreneurs and technologists focused on innovative Internet advertising and security solutions. The company’s proprietary online advertising platform, the branded TYPE-IN™, was designed to create highly effective opportunities for brands to engage online. With the platform, Solve Media guarantees brand message delivery, brand lift and return on investment for advertisers. Additionally, the platform creates new revenue and fraud protection opportunities for publishers, and saves time and provides value for consumers. Now part of Adiant, Solve Media is based in New York City and Philadelphia.

About Haymarket Media, Inc.

Haymarket Media, Inc. creates award-winning specialist content for international audiences. It is the U.S. division of Haymarket Media Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.

The company has 72 market-leading brands in 20 offices across six countries, connecting people and communities across digital, mobile, print and live media.

Although Haymarket’s portfolio is diverse, its philosophy is the same across borders and markets: deliver brand experiences that truly meet the needs of audiences and clients. It is this uncompromising focus that has earned the trust of millions worldwide.

Sophisticated bots, non-standardized experiences and aggressive publishing tactics have outwitted traditional Pre-roll measurement analytics leaving advertisers frustrated

New York, NY April 25th, 2017 - Solve Media, the Web’s leading provider of Type-In ad solutions and services, today announced the launch of its Video Engagement Verification (VEV) service to help advertisers measure the effectiveness of their pre-roll and mid-roll digital video advertising campaigns.  The use of Video ads is growing rapidly, yet unevenly, with more placements occurring on websites and pages that are primarily text or image based such are articles and slideshows.  In many cases users have no intent on watching video content even though the video ads are 100% “Viewable”, or played to completion in terms of standard industry metrics.

“The reality is that current methods of measuring the value or efficacy of digital video ads are highly flawed and misleading”, said Ash Nashed MD, CEO of Solve Media. “Solve Media’s VEV measures true human interactions with the video player and provides advertisers with actionable and scalable data that directly measures users’ intent to engage with the video content”.  VEV metrics are available at the URL level to help advertisers optimize their buys as well as the CPMs paid for the media. While beta testing the technology across multiple properties and networks where pre-roll video ads are purchased, Solve proved that actual human video engagement rates vary markedly and often do not correlate with the CPM rates charged.  

According to eMarketer, almost 12 billion dollars will be spent on digital video advertising in 2017. “In today’s ecosystem, if you are buying video advertising without VEV, you are likely over-paying for a large part of your buy”, said Nashed. “VEV is currently the only way to understand where you are wasting your video marketing dollars.”  

Solve Media’s digital video advertising VEV solution is the new gold standard metric and is now being white labeled for large national and vertical publishers as well as other media, agency and Adtech organizations who seek to improve the quality and transparency of pre-roll campaigns for advertisers.  

About Solve Media

By Ari Jacoby, CEO

Last week, Las Vegas was a whirlwind of innovation and cutting edge technology as the marketing technology industry came together to discuss all the latest advancements. There was much to take in at the International CES, but a few major upcoming trends stood out.

Mobile was a common theme, and it is clear that 2015 will be the year the advertising industry finally achieves cross-device advertising and mobile attribution.

Consumers are now more connected than ever, via more devices than ever before. Nielsen’s most recent Digital Consumer Report revealed that Americans now own, on average, four digital devices. This creates a distinct challenge for advertisers, who struggle to find identifiers that are consistent on every device.

Social log-ins have become a popular method for doing this, but a new trend is emerging with scaled first-party data making cross-device advertising possible outside of social media. An added bonus – this first-party, deterministic data, offers certainty that advertisers are reaching the right consumers.

Measuring the contribution of all these devices was an issue for advertisers in 2014, especially where mobile was concerned. Accurately measuring mobile campaign attribution will finally become a norm in 2015.

Being able to determine ROI for mobile campaigns will be a huge push for advertisers to invest more budget, with confidence. In turn, the most value will accrue to those companies offering certainty to advertisers, both in the form of cross-device advertising and mobile attribution.

Quarterly Market Advisory shows greater-than-expected increases in third quarter.

NEW YORK – December 23, 2014 – Suspicious web traffic in the U.S. was up 36% from the second quarter, and bot traffic grew by 35%. That’s according to the latest Quarterly Bot Traffic Market Advisory from Solve Media, which went live today.

According to the study, both global and US suspicious web traffic and bot fraud numbers increased from Q2, a pattern that has become the norm year over year.

“This research takes a deep dive into the retail vertical,” said Solve Media CEO Ari Jacoby. “We learned that 55% of the traffic on retail-specific sites was suspicious, with 34% of traffic confirmed as bot. Retailers expect to spend more than $11 billion on digital advertising this year, according to eMarketer. Our figures show that $4.6 billion of that could be wasted this year alone on both display and mobile platforms.”

Exercising caution is more important now than ever, as fraudsters target big ad budgets surrounding Q4 holiday spending. Retailers are among the biggest advertisers during this time and need to be the most proactive in protecting their budgets.

Consumer Spending Showdown

Thanksgiving weekend is the biggest shopping weekend of the year, with consumers taking advantage of the sales to complete their holiday shopping. This year, we surveyed our network to find out how people are spending their money this holiday weekend. About 50% of people will shop on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with electronics and apparel making up the bulk of purchases.

Let's put the brakes on bot fraud!

by Ari Jacoby, CEO

Cars have always been near and dear to my heart – if I didn’t live in Manhattan, I’d own several. As you can imagine, we are very excited to be participating at this conference, as automotive marketers are huge players in the digital advertising space. In fact, by 2015 the automotive industry will be second only to retail as digital advertising’s biggest investor. This puts the industry in a great position to take a fierce stance against bot fraud and viewability issues.

Solve Media puts out a bellwether industry market advisory every quarter. In Q1, we took a deep dive into the automotive vertical to see just how bad the fraud problem is for auto marketers. We recently revisited the auto vertical to pull the latest bot numbers, which you can see below. While suspicious traffic is still quite high, bot traffic fell below 10% on both the display and mobile platforms. At first blush, the numbers suggest some nominal progress, though we expect Q4 numbers will get worse as ad spend increases during the busy holiday season.

Alarmingly, the amount of suspicious mobile traffic nearly doubled between Q1 and Q3, though Q3 saw a dip in bot traffic in both desktop and mobile. US and global traffic saw a similar trend, the full results of which we will be releasing next month. We believe that, as the issue garners more attention, advertisers are taking action against bots and demanding that their agency partners buy more carefully, from higher quality partners.

Unfortunately, bot abuse is profitable and will be a long-term war. Automotive advertisers (and the advertising industry as a whole) must continue to take proactive measures to combat fraud. Along with seeking out engagement-based advertising, advertisers should consider asking their trading desks for verified human audience segments.

Halloween is fast approaching! We surveyed our network to find out everything advertisers need to know about the holiday. According to NRF, total spending is expected to reach $7.4 billion this year. Memorable ads play an important role, with 26% of moms choosing one brand of candy over another after seeing one.

The Hot Topic - Secure Engagement

By Ari Jacoby, CEO

It is an exciting week in New York City. The past two and a half days have been jam-packed with inspiring talks and fun events as the advertising industry comes together to discuss the latest technology and issues in the business.

A common theme is the importance of real, meaningful engagement. In today’s social-connected world, it is easier than ever for brands to “talk at” consumers, but increasingly harder to truly engage real consumers in a memorable, consistent manner.

Scaled first party data makes linkage and match-based targeting possible outside of social media, and there are tremendous strategic opportunities in that vein. Cognition based marketing takes that targeting one step further, allowing marketers to put their message in front of the right consumer (at the right time), such that there is the guarantee of message comprehension. Performance-based branding is therefore a hot topic this week - there is no clear winner in the brand advertising space and my sense is we’re about to see a commercial brawl for those dollars!

There’s also a ton of chatter around security and bot protection, in consideration of effectiveness metrics: a secure audience greatly outperforms generic, insecure media buys. In that light, we recently re-evaluated the benchmarks by which we assess our cognition-based secure media campaigns and found that consumers are 14 times more likely to recall a brand message after having engaged with it (as opposed to seeing it in a display ad). We’ll be releasing the rest of the updated benchmarks later this month.

Another big takeaway is that there are a bunch of companies pushing data that is marginally interesting, with very little differentiation. Behavioral ad targeting data is semi-useful, but nowhere near as valuable as deterministic data sets that enable marketers to securely focus on real, in-market consumers with declarative intent.

Solve Media study shows high levels of fraudulent traffic in CPG vertical

New York City – September 18, 2014 – Today, Solve Media released the results of its Quarterly Bot Traffic Market Advisory, revealing a healthy decrease in suspicious traffic from Q1. Global traffic showed a 16% decrease and national traffic decreased 19%. This follows the suspicious web activity trends seen throughout 2013, as reported in this former Bot Traffic Market Advisory.

An in-depth look into the CPG vertical uncovered a different trend, especially in mobile traffic. Mobile bot traffic in this vertical was 21% higher than global norms and 40% higher than US mobile traffic. According to Google’s Mobile In-Store study, eight out of ten smartphone owners research products before making a purchase. With more mobile traffic on CPG-related sites, it is no surprise that there is more fraudulent mobile traffic.

These higher bot numbers correspond with a spike in CPG mobile advertising spend. Mobile ad exchanges Smaato, Millennial Media and Nexage all saw significant increase in CPG mobile spend in Q2, especially in programmatic. Mobile advertising spend is estimated to reach $18 billion by the end of 2014, up 83% from last year, according to Gartner, Inc. Not surprisingly, CPG advertisers are taking a proactive stance in the fight against bot fraud.

“As CPG ad spending grows and the threat landscape increases, it makes sense that fraud is dramatically increasing. The fraudsters are following the money as CPG advertisers begin to invest more in mobile channels,” said Justin Somaini, Chief Trust Officer at Box. “This is why, as an industry, we need to prioritize preventing these advanced attacks. Data-driven solutions that drive cognition and emphasize engagement will eliminate bot traffic altogether.”       

With Q2 generally being a slow period for advertisers, Solve Media does not expect this decrease to continue. Ad budgets will be ramping up for the holiday season and suspicious traffic will likely increase throughout the second half of the year.

About Solve Media

Solve Media was founded by veteran entrepreneurs and technologists focused on data, security solutions and innovative Internet advertising. The company’s proprietary online and mobile advertising platform, the TYPE-IN, was designed to create highly effective opportunities for brands to engage with real consumers. With this platform, Solve Media guarantees brand message delivery, brand lift and return on investment for advertisers. Additionally, the platform creates new revenue opportunities for publishers and saves time for consumers.

By Ari Jacoby, CEO

We are very excited to be at Adexchanger’s Programmatic I/O today. It’s been a great conference so far, with the industry’s best and brightest coming together to discuss the future of intelligent (hyper-targeted) marketing.

It is clear from this conference that programmatic buying is becoming more sophisticated. Adoption rates are growing and all signs point to the fact that it will be the industry norm sooner rather than later. However, it is not without its challenges.

In a recent survey conducted by Solve Media, we asked 100 programmatic media buyers to list their biggest concerns with programmatic ad buying. Fraud and bot abuse was the number one response, with seven out of ten media buyers citing it as a concern. Difficulties with cross-channel attribution and a lack of quality video inventory were also major concerns, with over 50% of respondents citing these as challenges.

Not surprisingly, a big theme at Programmatic I/O has been how to address fraud within the marketplace. With all the technological advancements and changes to the advertising ecosystem, we’re glad that this issue is getting the attention it deserves.  Eliminating fraud in programmatic buying will go a long way towards reassuring hesitant marketers that it is a safe investment.

Guaranteeing a human audience will be table stakes sooner rather than later. We certainly have the data and technology to make this a reality. Bot detection and fraud prevention need to be an innate part of open exchanges and RTB.  As an example, WPP’s Xaxis has made great progress with its new offering, Xaxis Prime. Launched in early August, Xaxis Prime guarantees a 95% human audience through both pre and post campaign efforts.  We predict most of the players in their bracket will follow suit in the near-term.

Scaled first party data matters, as well.  Few have it, but it is clear that cross-screen campaigns and proper campaign attribution will follow anti-fraud as the next hot industry topic.

Back to school season is upon us! Here is what advertisers need to know about consumer buying habits. With spending estimated to reach $75 billion this year, 71% of agency media buyers are prioritizing keeping their clients' ads free of bot traffic.

We are proud to announce that Inc. magazine ranked Solve Media #255 on this year’s Inc. 500 list. 2014 has been a year of exciting growth for us and we are honored to be recognized amongst the nation's premier high growth companies.

Thank you to all of our team members, partners, investors and friends who helped us achieve this goal!

Native advertising is a hot topic in marketing. In a survey conducted by The 614 Group and OneSpot, they discovered that 67% of marketers surveyed found native advertising "interesting and valuable" yet have issues with getting their messages out to the right customer.

In August of 2014, The 614 Group published a study of nine different native advertising technology vendors to help publishers understand the landscape and choose the right vendor for them. Please read below.