V Is For Validation: VivaKi, Vindico To Track Video Quality Across Publicis Shops Worldwide
- by Gavin O'Malley @mp_gavin, November 6, 2013
Video ad-serving and tracking firm Vindico just expanded its partnership with Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi.Per the new pact, Vindico’s Adtricity service will be used to track and measure the quality of video ad placements by Publicis Groupe and its agencies in over 100 markets around the world.
“We believe in playing an extremely active role in helping to solve for viewability across channels in the industry,” Kurt Unkel, global president of audience on demand (AOD) at VivaKi, told Online Media Daily on Wednesday.
Launched earlier this year, Adtricity was designed to help brands determine how and where their ads are seen with “qualifiers,” including the total time that ads are in-view, ads’ placement on screen and viewers’ browser tab activity.
Adtricity’s quality ratings system issues campaigns an A through F rating, which is intended to help advertisers evaluate how well their buy is performing. Earlier this year, Vindico estimated that as much as 30% to 40% of video ad impressions are fraudulent or of poor quality. According to Unkel, guaranteeing quality ad views remains a work in progress.
Regarding VivaKi’s use of Adtricity, Unkel said: "It’s a step forward, but it’s not the end of the line by any means. At the core of what we have been doing since day one with our VivaKi Verified solution is to establish quantifiable standards we can apply that help us understand what is 'quality' or 'premium'," he explained.
As for the real value of viewability, Unkel said it “provides insight and intelligence into aspects of the media buy that we didn’t have before, and that’s critically important for not only confidently saying something has 'quality,' but also optimization.”
“That being said, I do think it’s a bit irresponsible to try and apply this immature standard as an absolute buying metric today, as it needs to work out the kinks still,” Unkel added. “It’s not a silver bullet.”
VivaKi first teamed up with Vindico in 2010 to help power The Pool -- the Publicis unit’s online advertising research initiative. Together, VivaKi and Vindico built what they call a “choice-based” online video ad model, dubbed ASq.
Since 2010, the partnership has been expanded to include additional interactive units, targeting and verification. VivaKi agencies were also given access to Vindico’s demo-verification partnerships with Nielsen and comScore.
Vindico currently provides video ad management services to hundreds of brands through partnerships with Publicis, as well as GroupM, Havas, IPG and Omnicom.
4 comments about "V Is For Validation: VivaKi, Vindico To Track Video Quality Across Publicis Shops Worldwide".
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How does this system track RTB inventory if sold and resold?
The assumptions here are that Vindico is the ad server and rendering the ad via VPAID. The mechanism for gathering the Adtricity metrics would lie within the ad creative itself and track quality metrics no matter where the ad is routed. The only challenge would be if the rendered ad is serving into an iFrame and thus prevented from capturing domain level information - viewability measurement would not be hindered, however.
That is exactly my concern; while tracking verification for non i-Frame serving is helpful, usually those publishers are legit. It is when you start going programmatic where the verification breaks down.
Vindico is in 100% agreement. While viewability functioning in iframes provides 1 layer of transparency over how buys are being executed, the black hole is the iframe and the lack of visibility to the domain and page. It's a huge concern to us. That is why Adtricity is not limited to only viewability. By using the pixel, a panel and a crawler we provide a comprehensive view of how the ads are being executed.
Happy to connect with you to show you how this all works.