• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 25, 2014

Publicis Groupe's VivaKi on Thursday launched a tool to evaluate ad placements through its programmatic media-buying platform, Audience On Demand. The tool, Quality Index, will source inventory based on metrics that assess viewability, page content quality and historic performance.  

VivaKi built the index on performance metrics and data from comScore, Integral Ad Science (IAS), Proximic and various Demand Side Platforms (DSPs), as well as ad server performance data. The data will be integrated into VivaKi's system, SkySkraper, to provide side-by-side data comparisons.

comScore was part of the first phase of developing Quality Index and will provide visibility into contextual categories. This includes granular, log-level data on impressions for viewability and brand safety metrics.

IAS, the latest partner to join the Quality Index, enabled VivaKi to use IAS Bid Expert, giving Publicis Groupe agencies and its clients the access to exclusive, pre-bid data for targeting around brand safety, fraud, viewability and page context during the real-time bidding auction process. VivaKi is also testing another IAS product that gives it access to deeper data analysis helping to access media performance and refine the company's internal definitions of quality.

VivaKi EVP, Global Solutions Doug Kofoid believes that the variety of ads in the industry creates quality issues, which in turn confuses marketers in terms of the metrics and the media they should use to ensure their ads are seen.

For video, VivaKi will work with its preferred video verification and viewability partner Vindico to ensure better video viewability and quality. By analyzing post-bid data, the company will use insights to optimize campaigns, determine best practices for quality assurance in campaign set-up and develop viewability-optimized site lists.

For ads not serving through Vindico, VivaKi is exploring options available through IAS and DoubleClick for measuring and reporting, as well as DSP partners Videology and Adap.TV.