Media agency launches the Meta Quality Barometer to address issues of ad fraud and campaign transparency in the industry
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.”
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO Australia conversation on LinkedIn: CMO Australia, join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia, or check us out on Google+: google.com/+CmoAu
In the third and final episode of our 3-part CMO50 video series exploring modern marketing and why it’s become a matter of trust, we’re delighted to be joined by Telstra’s former CMO and now digital services and sales executive, Jeremy Nicholas, and Adobe VP Marketing Asia-Pacific and Japan, Duncan Egan.
Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.
Why is it there is no shortage of leadership development materials, yet outstanding leadership is so rare? Despite having access to so many leadership principles, tools, systems and processes, why is it so hard to develop and improve as a leader?
As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.
