UM Checking Twice, Using Double Verify To Track Campaigns

by Gavin O'Malley , August 26, 2009

Interpublic's Universal McCann has tapped digital media-verification company DoubleVerify to better vet the tracking and delivery of clients' ad campaigns.

In May, DoubleVerify launched a real-time verification platform for online ad transactions. By tracking the delivery of clients' campaigns, the company endeavors to help agencies, marketers, publishers and ad networks increase ad accountability and transparency.

This theoretically allows marketers and their agencies to identify and remove budget waste from their campaigns, safeguard the reputation of their brands online, uphold regulatory compliance requirements, and verify that they fully capitalized on their marketing opportunities.

"By tracking the actual delivery of client advertising campaigns and verifying that they are being delivered in compliance with our insertion order terms and conditions and buying guidelines, DoubleVerify helps us confirm that we got what we paid for in our online advertising and helps eliminate impressions that have no true value for our clients," says Mitchell Weinstein, vice president of ad operations for UM.

UM clients include Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson, MasterCard, Microsoft, Sony, Bacardi, L'Oreal, Charles Schwab, Dyson and BMW.

DoubleVerify is headquartered in New York City, with engineering offices in Tel Aviv, Israel. In May, the company closed a $3.5 million Series A financing found led by Blumberg Capital, with participation from First Round Capital, Genacast Ventures and private investors.

analytics, metrics

4 comments about "UM Checking Twice, Using Double Verify To Track Campaigns".

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Andrew Ettinger, August 27, 2009 at 10:57 a.m.
Doesn't the third party ad server do this?
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Rob Perrier from Adometry, August 27, 2009 at 1:25 p.m.

Andrew - it's about motivation, data integrity, and focus. The third party ad server is motivated to serve in volume regardless of the quality of the placement. And if you want a single coherent (apples-to-apples) comparison to drive toward ROI for your entire campaign, you don't want data from several different servers, networks, etc. Someone in the ad metrics space is going to have a depth of understanding without any desire to cherry pick data to enhance their own position.

Matthew Wood from Razorfish, August 27, 2009 at 2:21 p.m.

Candidly, if 3PASers provided this service, either by default or for a small premium, there would be no need for companies such as DF or AdXpose.

It is true that a backwards looking analysis of ad calls could be done using 3PAS data, but the time and cost of doing this is prohibitive for most advertisers.

Howie Goldfarb from Blue Star Strategic Marketing, August 27, 2009 at 5:52 p.m.

I have been curious if the ad networks can tell if a served ad was blocked from a browser such as Firefox which offers ad blocking and no scripts apps. Or if it registers successful even though it wasn't seen on the screen.