Alliance For Audited Media Merges With ImService Group

The Alliance for Audited Media, previously known as the Audit Bureau of Circulations, is absorbing ImServices Group, a provider of advertising technology audit services, in order to provide a broader range of services in digital ad measurement and verification, the organizations announced.

Effective May 30, ImServices will operate as part of AAM, and the companies are unveiling a new viewability audit service, “Certified View,” as their debut product together.

The merger with ImServices bolsters AAM’s capabilities in key areas of interactive advertising where publishers, agencies and advertising clients alike are demanding more transparency and accountability, including the ability to identify and weed out unseen ads, illegitimate clicks, bots, and other forms of fraudulent traffic across different digital media platforms.

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Their first collaboration, the Certified View audit service, is intended to help companies preparing for MRC accreditation or seeking IAB certification for compliance with new viewable ad impression standards, recently adopted after months of consultation and dialogue by the MRC and IAB along with major industry stakeholders. Certified View offers consultation services, viewability implementation testing, IAB certification, and support for full MRC accreditation.

ImServices’ client list already includes publishers, agencies and e-commerce platforms, like Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Medialets, Kantar, Pandora and Centro. It is also in charge of managing the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s “International Spiders and Bot list,” a global resource used by ad tech companies to filter out manufactured and fraudulent traffic from audience metrics.

AAM CEO, president and managing director Tom Drouillard noted, “Each organization has complementary strengths and strong industry ties that allow us to take on critical issues like online fraud, ad viewability, mobile metrics and cross-media measurement.”

IAB CEO and president Randall Rothenberg praised ImServices’ “contributions to our efforts to combat fraud, improve audience measurement and reduce supply chain friction have been enormous,” adding, “We look forward to continuing that partnership now that ImServices and AAM are hitched.”

Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers, stated: “We support AAM’s efforts and encourage them to work closely with the digital advertising landscape -- publishers, ad tech firms, agencies, trade associations and other audit firms. It is imperative that the ecosystem addresses online fraud and improves media measurement and transparency.”

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