#iabvideocommittee

Partnership Delivers Independent, DSP-Integrated Audience Verification Across the Region

SINGAPORE, June 9, 2015 – Today, comScore, Inc. and TubeMogul announced a partnership in Asia Pacific that will deliver brand advertisers an independent, DSP-integrated audience verification solution across the region. Marketers can measure audience reach via comScore validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE®) for digital video campaigns through a direct integration within TubeMogul’s programmatic platform.

 Through the agreement, advertisers can use comScore vCE measurement to verify audience reach across 13 countries in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

“We have worked hard to deliver on the needs of brand advertisers across the region and we believe our partnership with comScore will propel the growth of programmatic video branding in the region,” said Susan Salop, TubeMogul Vice President, Asia. “Brands now have access to an audience verification tool from a trusted, independent source and will enjoy improved measurement and accountability for their video spend.”

The comScore vCE solution provides unduplicated impression-level delivery metrics by reporting the percentage of validated impressions that reached the advertiser’s target demographic and geographic audience. 

“We are delighted to bring comScore vCE to programmatic video advertising markets in Asia Pacific, and we believe our partnership with TubeMogul will help brands have access to the right metrics, and ensure their video ads are being delivered accurately and efficiently,” said Joe Nguyen, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific at comScore.

Salop said a big trend across Asia Pacific was a concern of the lack of standardised cross-screen measurement in programmatic video advertising and the partnership with comScore enables brands to use the same metrics in comparing the success of their online video investments to their television campaigns.

With the steady rise in programmatic video, more interest is developing around the role of direct private deals within the programmatic sector.

Kevin Smyth, Sales Director at TVN and member of the IAB Singapore Video Committee shares his knowledge on the development and impact of direct deals.

Not long ago, buying online video inventory was a convoluted process of processing a traditional purchase order between a buyer and seller. Advertisers found this time-consuming, too manual, and hard to measure the effectiveness
of their spending. On the other end, publishers couldn’t efficiently manage their yields for fluctuating inventory levels. When Real Time Bidding and programmatic video buying entered the ecosystem, this enabled advertisers to buy long-tail inventory from multiple suppliers both transparently, and at a competitive price.

With video consumption habits changing, premium publishers and broadcasters are seeing viewership increase across multiple screens. Advertisers familiar with buying television ad spots now want to buy across devices and screens with the same method as buying long tail sites. However, publishers have been skeptical about this shift. They are worried that RTB will create a “race to the bottom”, and buyers will leapfrog direct sales channels, which cuts away the core revenue of a publisher’s business.

In 2014, we have seen the birth of VPX (Video Private Exchanges), which is also referred to as Private Marketplaces (PMP) or Programmatic Direct (PD) deals. This is a controlled marketplace that allows publishers to determine which buyers can buy their inventory through an auction.

With a video private exchange, publishers can increase yields for indirect premium inventory without jeopardizing guaranteed direct or sponsorship
 deals. Publishers selling programmatically will bring more demand to the table, and add a private exchange layer to ensure higher yields and tighter control.

Within our own company, we envisage that over 60% of our business will be traded through private exchanges in the year 2015. We have seen huge growth across Australia & Asia, and we’re now starting to see Agency Trading Desks and DSPs (Demand Side Platforms) have a demand for premium inventory they can access programmatically in an “indirect premium” environment.

These are the thoughts of the GroupM programmatic media and technology platform, Xaxis.

“As a business, we fundamentally believe that scale - in every sense - matters. Whilst open exchanges have a part to play in the inventory mix, uncertainty in price is not what our clients expect when they buy from us. They expect us to intelligently use our scale to deliver campaigns in brand safe premium environments, and at the same time deliver market leading value. The rise of the private exchange allows us to execute our strategy, providing both buyer and seller the necessary control to deliver campaigns at scale.”

-Carl Nawagamuwa, Director Xaxis TV, APAC

Below is a diagram that helps to explain the new “indirect premium” channel that publishers can now push in programmatic environments. Previously, publishers had one or two sales strategies. The first strategy was to have a direct sales team to sell their inventory; anything unsold would be wasted and not monetized. The second strategy was to have an open exchange strategy for any unsold inventory. Some publishers worried about conflict, CPM prices and lack of control.

With Video Private Exchanges, you can build marketplaces controlled completely by the seller and have invite-only buying at the CPM you are willing to sell at. This is the modern-day walled garden of selling, but with the advantage of trading programmatically. Many variables can be added into the private exchange, such as first-look for specific advertisers, inventory to trading partners, and fixed CPM trading.

VPX (Video Private Exchange)

Written by:

Kevin Smyth IAB Video Committee Programmatic Sales Director ASEAN | TVN.ASIA Email: [email protected]

Viewability is set to become one of the most talked-about topics in digital media in 2015, and rightly so. Every piece of media bought and traded deserves the chance to be seen and any progress made towards that is good for the industry.  Here is a point of view from the IAB SEA.

Technology is finally making it easier for marketers to know if the digital ad they purchased has an opportunity to be seen.  Software tools are driving this revolution. For fifty years, brands ploughed their budgets into television advertising based on the assumption that a large portion of their target audience would see their latest campaign.

Now, consumers are spending more time on the web, laptops, tablets, and mobile apps. The audience is fragmented and its easier for consumers to click away, closed an ad on screen, or simply mute it. That’s why viewability - the ability to measure whether the advertising they purchased were in sight on a page - is crucial for the growth of digital advertising.

There are a few main reasons that digital ads are not seen. Firstly, the consumer can endeavor, or deliberately ignore an ad. On the web, this happens by viewers muting an ad, or they open another tab/window, or scroll down to consume other content while the ad plays out. The other reason is more vexatious, and refers to poorly placed display ads (in display) or fake pre-roll (in video) on publisher sites.

Rather than simply report on viewability, technology has been designed to tell marketers why an ad is not getting watched. Real-time metrics include how much of an ad is in-frame, whether a viewer is in another tab or window, ad/player size, whether a video player is muted, how many ads are measurable and more.  The digital advertising market is acting quickly to improve viewability rates, and tell brands what their view rates are.  In short, digital measurement is becoming more and more accountable.

Brands should have access to domain-level visibility, rather than merely insight into the view rate at the campaign or publisher level. Advertisers should also be able to act on the viewability information provided by their technology partner, and have the ability to exclude low-performing sites.

The narrative has turned to viewable impressions, away from the number of served ads, and will be a part of the increasing demand for transparency in every step of the purchase process. The emergence of new precise advertising analytics also enables the process of verifying audiences and determining how a brand’s advertising creative has actually influenced audiences.  As poor inventory is scrubbed out, viewability rates will continue to rise in Southeast Asia, and brands will be more comfortable about increasing their digital spend. Viewability is important for all media and benefits every single player in the digital ecosystem.  The Media Rating Council (MRC) has deemed it worthy enough to set out guidelines on what constitutes a viewable impression (http://www.iab.net/media/file/MRC-Viewable-Ad-Impression-Measurement-Guideline.pdf).

Why Viewability Matters:

For Content Producers: Assesses true value of all ad inventory and provide more granular data on engagement and context (for instance, ads below the fold, previously deemed undesirable, may have much higher value)

For Ad Tech Partners: Empowers buyers and sellers to assess the quality of inventory, reduce costs, increase operational efficiency, and improve accountability

For Ad Buyers: Enables marketing spend to be more effective and reduce wastage

For Brands: Ensures that every ad you buy has the opportunity to be viewed

IAB SEA Guiding Principles on Viewability:

The IAB SEA Adopts the definitions of viewability by the Media Rating Council (MRC)

The ambition is that 100% of traded digital media be viewable

The reality of 100% viewability in SEA is unreasonable in 2015

There is a collective responsibility to understand viewability data and its impact in 2015

The goal is to use viewability as a traded metric in 2016

Brands want access to meaningful reach and engagement with consumers and they want to minimize wastage. The move to a more transparent mindset will propel brand trust in digital and video advertising. By creating industry acceptance and parameters around viewability, the marketing industry in South East Asia will move one step closer in realizing the promise that digital media can offer to marketers.

Written by:

Phu Truong in collaboration with IAB Singapore Marketing and Ad Technology Committee & IAB Singapore Video Committee Managing Director | TubeMogul, Inc. Email: [email protected]

Learn from the best in the industry. Grab a front-row seat in examining Digital Video Strategy and how you can take full advantage of this technology today!