• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 11, 2021

Integral Ad Science Holding Corp. (IAS) plans to launch a beta before the end of this year with one or two video publishers for connected TV (CTV) that will verify the channels in which a marketer’s impressions ran. The company announced the news Wednesday during its third-quarter 2021 earnings call with analysts.

It’s one of many initiatives that Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS, believes continues to increase revenue for the company, as publishers and marketers expand into programmatic CTV.

Earlier this year, IAS acquired Publica, a CTV advertising platform, in a cash and stock transaction valued at $220 million. Video publishers and marketers would feel more comfortable shifting media budgets from traditional to digital if supported by transparency, she said.

Programmatic, contextual, and CTV drove up revenue for IAS in the quarter. “We had incredible strong third quarter earnings,” Utzschneider said.

IAS reported that third-quarter 2021 earnings rose 32% year-over-year to $79 million, but programmatic jumped 49% to $33.7 million driven by the adoption of contextual targeting.

In addition to programmatic, international revenue gains also drove revenue and performance. In fact, international revenue jumped 25% to $28.7 million, contributing 36% of total revenue for the third quarter of 2021.

Utzschneider pointed to specific trends driving revenue, such as iconic brands partnering with one provider that can verify brand safety and suitability globally. Companies like Coca-Coca, Nestles, and GlaxoSmithKline, she said. It’s prompting brands to sign longer contracts with IAS, up to three years.

The company plans to invest in programmatic reporting and contextual targeting, as well as provide increasing transparency such as the Total Visibility product, which provides transparency to the supply path in Google DV 360.

Live feeds in social platform continues to become another area of focus for 2022 for the company. IAS engineers built a brand safety product for TikTok. The tool is running in tests across the U.S., Germany, and France with more than two-dozen advertisers.

The TikTok video classification supports video, audio, images, and text frame by frame. The company’s now building a post-bid solution for TikTok to verify what ran, and a brand safety solution for Twitter that is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2022.

“The one thing marketers keep asking about is Facebook, but Facebook has yet to partner with a third-party verification company,” said Utzschneider. “They have built a first-party solution that’s in beta.”

IAS also provided financial guidance for the fourth quarter of 2021. For the quarter ending December 31, 2021, IAS expects total revenue to reach between $94 million and $96 million.

The company also increased its full-year outlook. Total revenue should come in between $315 million and $317 million.