Havas launches data-driven barometer to monitor digital campaign quality

Havas Media’s Australian CEO says its launch of a data-driven ‘quality barometer’ for campaign measurement and compliance globally will bring much-needed transparency into the brand-agency-media owner relationship.

The new Meta Quality Barometer uses the data management and consultancy capabilities of Havas Media’s expanded Artemis Alliance arm, along with a host of third-party technologies, to gauge online advertising inventory quality and identify issues of ad fraud.

The barometer uses event-level raw and detailed data captured by Artemis and its technology partners to analyse and score the quality of media inventory. The data is then used to inform other part of Havas’ business in order to better manage and optimise campaigns. It is also now being offered via specific consulting services from Artemis to advertisers and media owners globally.

Havas Australian CEO, Mike Wilson, pointed out ad data fraud is an increasingly big issue for the industry. Transparency in how digital advertising is purchased and its effectiveness is another.

“There are a lot of issues in the media industry that have been well spoken about, and not just in Australia, but across other markets,” he told CMO. “If you have an explosion of data technology then you have to stand up and ensure everything that goes to market is robust.

“The non-human traffic costs a lot of money. This is our way of ensuring that transparency and clarity is available to advertisers as well as media owners.”

Variable and often insufficient standards around digital advertising monitoring globally have made it difficult to gain true visibility of campaign effectiveness in multiple markets, Wilson continued. As an example, he highlighted Havas client, Emirates, which advertises in multiple regions and requires dynamic changes and insights to ensure campaigns and messages go to the right people at the right time and via the right media.

The Meta Quality Barometer will be used to provide assurance and insight in five key areas. The first is compliance and matching ad impressions against purchased media to ensure campaigns meet the promise and technical specifications and requirements set by media owners and advertisers. This will be done by auditing both tagging systems through Artemis’ partnership with Hub’Scan, and creative work provided for each campaign, in partnership with ClarityAd.

The second focus is on user experience, and understanding how users interact with campaign messages to ensure the experience is an optimal one. To do this, Artemis will look at aspects such as how long pages and ads take to load, in partnership with Catchpoint, as well as where ads are located.

Thirdly, Artemis will rate impact media campaigns in terms of viewability and performance auditing, through to automatic and personalised tracking for each advertisers and each action. A fourth area of focus is context and brand safety, using technology from Adledge and Peer39/Sizmek to ascertain where impressions were delivered, as well as quantifying block impressions.

The fifth focus is campaign distribution and verifying legitimate ad delivery, using technology from Adledge, Peer39, Integral Ad Science and White Ops.

Artemis has 400 staff and is based in Paris, but operates additional centres of excellence in Spain and South America. Wilson said it will also open a new operation in Shanghai in coming months, which should provide further support for these services in Australia.

In a statement, global managing director for the Havas Group, Dominique Delport, said confidence in data quality is a critical issue for the industry.

“The scale of fraudulent inventory generated by sophisticated 'bots' is extremely concerning and neither media vendors nor agencies are safe,” he said. “We need to bring trust and clarity back for our clients.

“For these reasons, Havas has invested in our best-in-class Artemis Alliance data platform for over a decade. Now it manages 100 per cent of our online campaigns, harvesting over 300 billion secure and disaggregated data points each year. Its focus: To create an actionable measurement for viewability, brand protection, media inventory and campaign quality.”

Delport said the first Meta Quality Barometer will deliver a systematic barometer on data integrity, security and brand safety.

“This will facilitate and boost our communications with media owners to increase the quality of inventory for our clients.”

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