BRAND SAFETY:  (if a client says they only want to run on inventory deemed “brand safe”)

We are pleased to announce that starting August 1, 2021 all new campaigns launching with any Targeted Display, Native Display, Native Video, Video Pre-Roll, Household IP, OTT, Online Audio, and Social Mirror Ads will automatically include a DoubleVerify filter layered on top of the campaign.

What is DoubleVerify?  DoubleVerify authenticates the quality of digital ad impressions for the world’s largest brands ensuring viewable, fraud-free, brand-safe ad environments.  With this new partnership, we now will only bid on inventory that matches the client’s targeting strategies AND is on websites/apps that are authenticated by DoubleVerify.

What does that mean? All impressions we serve need to meet both criteria – the geography and targeting requested by the client AND the DoubleVerify parameters.  This comes at no additional cost to you.  With most digital providers there is an additional cpm surcharge to use DoubleVerify’s filters.  We are absorbing that cost.

There are two ways these new DoubleVerify filters protect your campaigns:

  • BRAND SAFETY:  DoubleVerify evaluates each real-time bidding auction for Brand Safety and only allows a bid to happen if it deems the publisher Brand Safe.    Brand Safe filters out content related to Adult Content, Drugs/Alcohol/Controlled Substances, Extreme Graphic/Explicit Violence/Weapons, Hate Speech/Profanity, Illegal Activities, Incentivized/Malware/Clutter, and Piracy/Copyright Infringement.
  • FRAUD:  DoubleVerify confirms the site is safe from Fraud & Invalid Traffic Browsers including Bots, Data Center, Hijacked Devices, Injected Ads and Emulators.  DoubleVerify uses a proprietary, MRC-accredited metric that ensures media quality. To be counted as Authentic, an ad must be fully viewed, by a real person, in a brand safe environment, within the intended geography. DoubleVerify is the only company accredited to measure and de-duplicate ad quality in this manner.

DoubleVerify is the leading verification platform for digital media measurement, data, and analytics. Their mission is to be the definitive source of transparency and data-driven insights into the quality and effectiveness of digital advertising for the world’s largest brands, publishers, and digital ad platforms. DoubleVerify’s technology platform provides advertisers with consistent and unbiased data and analytics that can be used to optimize the quality and return on their digital ad investments. Since 2008, DoubleVerify has helped hundreds of Fortune 500 companies gain the most from their media spend by delivering best in class solutions across the digital advertising ecosystem, helping to build a better industry.  Now this technology is being applied to all of your campaigns with us.

As for our other products, Facebook, Instagram and Mobile Conquesting, already have DoubleVerify automatically layered into their campaigns so we do not have to add it.  Amazon automatically filters fraudulent and invalid traffic as well as unsafe content using a combination of proprietary technology and solutions from comScore and Sizmek. This service is available by default and at no extra charge for Amazon DSP customers. Google also has their own brand safety standards in place.  Our Pay-Per-Click buys appear in the brand safe search engine results pages, instead of within the pages of a website itself.  In the ever-evolving world of digital, our goal is to give advertisers and our partners confidence that their online investment is protected.

For Additional Information on DoubleVerify, check out this blog: https://vicimediainc.com/are-your-digital-ads-being-served-on-legitimate-websites-and-apps/

VERIFICATION/FRAUD: (if a client says they want to use “3rd Party Verification Tags”)

By default we have an exhaustive blacklist of websites and apps that is added to all Display, Native Display, Native Video, Video Pre-Roll, Household IP, OTT, Online Audio, and Social Mirror Ads campaigns that filters out low quality sites/apps & inappropriate content. Our Campaign Managers optimize weekly for true client website conversions, not just clicks, as does our AI process.  If fraud is detected we credit back 100%.  Traffic that is considered invalid on our exchanges is automatically removed in our system and is not counted in their reporting or billing BUT MAY STILL APPEAR IN THE CLIENT’S GOOGLE ANALYTICS SINCE GOOGLE ANALYTICS REPORTS ALL TRAFFIC.   Again, clients do not pay for anything the platform deems questionable.

The DSPs we work with have their own measurements and safe guards that they use to protect each account from bot traffic. This allows us to filter campaigns and exclude domains which display ads on pages with adult content, domains with poor viewability stats, and domains with suspicious activity. The suspicious activity filter excludes domains which have demonstrated evidence of suspicious activity in the past, such as bot traffic, ad stacking, and other fraudulent behaviors. Each month we search account wide for fraudulent patterns outside of our exchanges with high clicks, low conversions, and add them to our blacklist.

However, if a client requests us to use their 3rd Party Verification Tags we can do that.  (These are sometimes called Ad Tags or Blocking Tags.)  These are provided by 3rd party verification partners such as IAS, MOAT, DoubleVerify, etc. that a client might be using.   A tag is a piece of code attached to an ad that scans the page where the impression is about to be placed and determines whether or not a page is brand safe, or if the end user is a bot, among other things.  If it deems the impression to be safe and non fraudulent, it lets the call to the ad server happen. Otherwise it prevents the ad from displaying.

The client would provide us with the ad creative and the tag code and we add it when we upload the ad creative to the exchanges. The client then can track their ad campaign in the dashboard of whatever 3rd Party they are using (i.e., MOAT, Double Verify) to make sure the campaign is meeting their benchmarks for brand safety, fraud, viewability, etc.  Vici does not log in to the client’s 3rd Party Verification account to monitor, that is something the client is responsible for and you will want to make sure the client understands that.  

VIEWABILITY/VIEWABLE IMPRESSIONS: (if a client says they only want to run in inventory classified as “Viewable Impressions”)
We do have the ability to bid on viewable impressions (or vCPM), for an additional .50 cent CPM hard cost ($1 CPM retail) to the cpm you are charging the client.  However, we don’t recommend bidding this way. When we’ve run vCPM campaigns in the past, the exchanges optimize for impressions instead of clicks and conversions, which makes the click-through rate extremely low. It’s typically only used for branding campaigns that are only focused on viewability. Instead we focus on true conversions, serving ads to people we think will click and convert. In Reporting Zone, you would override the CPM for that line item and indicate you want us to use Viewable Impressions filter.  This is available only for Native, Display, Video Pre-Roll, and Social Mirror Ads.

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Category: Brand Safety & Fraud, Viewability
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