DoubleVerify (DV) is a media effectiveness platform that leverages AI to drive superior outcomes for global brands. By creating more effective, transparent ad transactions, DV looks to strengthen the digital advertising ecosystem, ensuring a fair value exchange between buyers and sellers of digital media.
Earlier this year it had announced the launch of DV Attention for Publishers. This solution the company explains empowers publishers with insights to help them maximise the value of their inventory.
As the digital advertising landscape increasingly prioritises attention as a key metric to evaluate campaign success, DV Attention for Publishers aims to empower publishers with data and metrics to measure and optimize their inventory based on trusted, third-party verification.
This new offering delivers inventory and campaign insights for attention, including more than 15 metrics across over more than 10 dimensions of inventory. Furthermore, DV first received accreditation from the MRC in 2023 for its DV Authentic Attention metrics in DV Pinnacle across desktop, mobile web, and mobile apps.
This combination of expansive, impression-level attention data and accreditation reviews strengthens a publisher’s ability to deliver campaign outcomes and build trusted, results-driven advertiser partnerships the company elaborated.
Medianews4u caught up with Conrad Tallariti, DoubleVerify APAC Managing Director
Q. Could you shed light on the solutions that DoubleVerify offers to enhance transparency, mitigate risks, and optimise advertising performance?
Since its inception, DV has been steadfast in its mission to develop independent media quality and performance solutions that safeguard, strengthen and secure the digital advertising ecosystem. Guided by this core purpose, DV empowers brands with clarity, confidence and control over their digital investments, enabling them to excel in today’s dynamic marketing landscape.
DV’s advanced ad verification solutions ensure ads reach real audiences, appear in brand-safe environments and are shielded from fraud. Our flagship offerings — DV Authentic Ad, DV Authentic Attention, DV Authentic Brand Safety and DV Pinnacle — set the industry standard for comprehensive verification and analytics. These tools provide advertisers with actionable insights into campaign quality and engagement, empowering them to refine strategies while mitigating risks.
To enhance trust and transparency, DV recently expanded its AI-powered brand suitability coverage on major social platforms. This enhancement enables advertisers to verify campaign quality against controversial news and political topics, ensuring alignment with content that meets their specific brand standards. This further highlights DV’s dedication to protecting brand equity and fostering transparency during critical moments, such as election cycles.
At DV, innovation drives every decision. Our attention-based analytics provide valuable insights into user engagement, helping advertisers optimise inventory for maximum impact. The introduction of Scibids AI exemplifies our pioneering approach.
This solution integrates DV’s proprietary attention signals with AI-powered optimisations to deliver unparalleled campaign performance. It enables advertisers to pinpoint high-performing inventory, maximising attention, business outcomes and ROI — all without compromising scale.
AI lies at the heart of DV’s strategy to enhance sophistication and scalability. Our acquisition of Scibids AI signifies a seamless integration of cutting-edge AI technologies into DV’s trusted measurement solutions. Leveraging this synergy, we continue to refine our tools, ensuring our clients stay ahead in emerging channels such as CTV and retail media. The DV Universal Content Intelligence engine, powered by AI, ensures accurate content classifications, enabling comprehensive protection at scale.
Our industry-leading platform remains a trusted choice for hundreds of brands globally, spanning social, mobile, video, programmatic and retail platforms. Through these efforts, DV continues to drive better outcomes for advertisers, building a digital advertising ecosystem defined by trust, transparency and performance.
Q. Given the walled garden scenario, what is the way forward when it comes to transparent measurement?
In today’s dynamic digital landscape, advertisers require comprehensive, independent measurement across social media platforms to ensure their campaigns are effective and aligned with brand values.
Transparent measurement relies on two essential components: brand safety and brand suitability. Both of these are crucial for maintaining brand reputation, fostering consumer trust and strengthening campaign performance.
Brand safety focusses on avoiding ads appearing alongside universally harmful or inappropriate content, such as hate speech or explicit material. Conversely, brand suitability goes a step further by ensuring that ads are placed within environments that align with a brand’s unique identity and values. For instance, content suitable for one brand may not align with the goals or image of another, emphasizing the importance of tailored strategies.
DV employs a dual-layered approach to ensure both brand safety and suitability through:
● Pre-bid controls: Screening content and channels before ad impressions are delivered to ensure they align with a brand’s safety and suitability requirements.
● Post-bid analysis: Evaluating ad performance and content alignment after delivery to provide actionable insights for future campaigns.
This strategy helps advertisers protect their reputation, optimize ad spend, and enhance campaign impact while supporting platform and publisher monetization.
DV’s brand safety and suitability metrics focus exclusively on the ads, content and formats analyzed for our clients, not the entire platform. These metrics reflect the effectiveness of both pre- and post-bid solutions and the safeguards applied by brands through DV Pinnacle, our reporting and activation platform.
To keep pace with evolving ad formats, DV invests in expanding technical resources and deepening platform integrations to deliver reliable measurement across all environments. This enables advertisers to confidently navigate new formats and maintain robust coverage across social media channels.
Tailored brand safety and suitability strategies enable advertisers to build trust and accountability while fostering a balanced digital ecosystem. Transparent, independent measurement across social media platforms plays a crucial role in maximising campaign performance and ensuring that brands continue to thrive in an ever-changing digital advertising landscape.
Q. What role is AI playing in allowing you to enhance your offerings? At the same time does Generative AI increase the risk of brands being seen amidst inappropriate content?
AI plays a huge role in DV’s solutions. For example, in fraud detection, we employ advanced machine learning models that study the behavior of fraudulent activities through data curated by the DV Fraud Lab. These automated models then assign a risk score to every device, impression, app and site observed online, allowing us to rapidly identify new threats.
In content classification, AI plays a critical role. We use a multi-dimensional deep learning model consisting of hundreds of data points to train machines on our content classification categories. Simultaneously, AI examines the context in which ads are displayed, analysing contextual, historical and technical information on each impression. By comparing this data to our content classification model, we ensure precise and accurate classification.
Most recently, in the field of attention, we are developing products that combine DV’s trusted media quality and attention data with Scibids’ advanced AI technology to create customized optimization algorithms designed to boost campaigns’ attention levels. These algorithms go beyond traditional KPIs, such as CPCs, CPVs and CPAs, to help marketers achieve their unique business objectives.
This powerful combination of DV’s reliable media quality and performance data with Scibids’ cutting-edge AI technology empowers advertisers to implement an end-to-end approach, enabling comprehensive measurement and granular optimisation like never before. This synergy unlocks new levels of precision and efficiency, revolutionising how brands navigate today’s digital landscape.
As AI continues to revolutionize marketing and advertising, it also brings forth new challenges. The rise of generative AI has heightened concerns about maintaining quality inventory and safeguarding against unsafe content:
● Media Adjacency: With the ease of generating content at scale, the likelihood of encountering unsafe or inappropriate online content increases. This may challenge the availability of quality inventory and exacerbate the spread of harmful content, such as misinformation and deepfakes.
● Media Creation: While generative AI enhances efficiency in media creation, it introduces risks like unsafe content generation and potential intellectual property breaches.
● Ad Fraud: Generative AI heightens the risk of invalid traffic, especially with automatically generated content, as seen in made-for-advertising sites. According to our recently published Global Insights Report 2024, research from the DV Fraud Lab showed a 23 percent rise in new fraud schemes and variations in 2023 compared to the prior year. A significant driver behind this increase was generative AI.
Despite these challenges, we believe in fighting fire with fire. At DV, we blend advanced machine learning with human oversight to combat fraud at scale. Our AI-powered algorithms rapidly detect fraud, while human experts refine accuracy.
In content classification, especially in video and media, AI ensures efficiency, but human oversight guarantees precise, nuanced results. This synergy between AI and human expertise ensures top-tier media quality and brand safety at every level.
Q. As we move into a cookieless world how is DoubleVerify adapting its strategy?
The digital advertising industry has been in flux. For years, companies have been preparing for a cookieless future, spurred by major browsers that have already eliminated these tracking tools. This shift has led marketers to invest heavily in alternative tracking technologies, such as first-party data, and develop new strategies to reach audiences in a privacy-friendly manner.
However, Google’s recent decision to retain third-party cookies in its Chrome browser has caused ripples across the industry. While this move has relieved some advertisers, it also raises questions about the future of privacy standards and the relevance of cookie-free solutions that companies have been developing in response to the anticipated changes.
At DV, we’ve always prioritised consumer privacy, continuously evolving our strategy to meet the demands of a privacy-focused digital advertising landscape. We’re committed to providing solutions that drive performance while safeguarding user privacy. Our custom contextual solution aligns ads with relevant content without the use of cookies, boosting engagement and conversions without compromising privacy.
Similarly, DV’s attention solution delivers real-time insights into ad performance through engagement and exposure metrics — completely independent of third-party cookies.
According to DV’s 2024 Global Insights Report, Retail Media Networks (RMNs) are gaining traction, offering advertisers rich consumer data and direct access to audiences at the point of purchase. By 2024, RMNs are projected to account for one-fifth of global digital ad spend.
They provide advertisers with retailers’ first-party data to engage consumers at the moment of purchase and extend their reach through audience extension inventory. Solutions like DV Custom Contextual and DV Authentic Attention help advertisers leverage these opportunities while maintaining brand safety and suitability across media buys.
The acquisition of Scibids AI is another example of our commitment to privacy-friendly advertising practices and our objective to offer future-proofed solutions to our customers. Scibids AI is privacy-friendly, meaning that it does not rely on cookies or personal identifiers to make its optimisation decisions; instead, it relies on the widely available contextual signals of advertising impressions.
Q. What role does the company’s Fraud Lab play in combating ad fraud?
The DV Fraud Lab plays a pivotal role in safeguarding advertisers by leveraging a combination of advanced AI and human expertise. It analyses vast datasets in real-time to identify both large-scale fraud trends and subtle variations that fraudsters use to avoid detection.
AI helps the lab detect complex fraud schemes that would be impossible for humans to identify, providing preemptive protection for DV’s clients. This proactive approach ensures that advertisers are shielded from threats like bot fraud and site fraud, which are increasingly common in CTV and mobile environments.
The latest Global Insight Report highlights that in 2023, there has been a 269 percent increase in the average number of variants per streaming fraud scheme and a 58 percent rise in overall fraud schemes compared to 2022, demonstrating how fraudsters are using AI to scale their attacks.
Generative AI is further exploited to create thousands of fake user agents and app reviews, complicating detection efforts. However, DV’s pre-bid and post-bid solutions have proven highly effective, maintaining a low 1.1 percent post-bid fraud rate for advertisers. By continuously evolving its fraud detection methods, the DV Fraud Lab ensures advertisers receive high-quality placements while minimizing losses from invalid impressions.
Q. Could you talk about how the company’s Election Task Force will help advertisers face challenges during an election?
The DV Election Task Force is designed to help advertisers navigate the complex and often unpredictable landscape of election seasons. This multidisciplinary team includes brand safety and suitability specialists, alongside analysts from the industry-leading DV Fraud Lab, who closely monitor emerging trends in political discourse, including the spread of misinformation and polarizing narratives.
During the 2020 US election, for instance, 72 per cent of adults reported encountering election-related news that appeared completely fabricated. Recognising this issue, the task force provides real-time insights and recommendations, enabling advertisers to avoid harmful content that could negatively impact their brand reputation.
A key role of the Election Task Force is to assist advertisers in building robust brand safety strategies tailored to the election environment. Sensitive content categories such as inflammatory political content, hate speech and misinformation are identified, with solutions offered to prevent ads from appearing next to unsafe material.
This is critical because 61 per cent of consumers stated they would be less likely to use a brand if they saw it advertised alongside false content. Advanced AI-driven tools for content classification empower advertisers to avoid risky environments while still maximising campaign reach. In 2020, political ad spending surged to $9 billion, doubling from 2018, making it essential for brands to protect their investments without missing out on high-impact opportunities.
The task force provides an ongoing analysis of the evolving political climate, delivering updates and tailored recommendations to help advertisers adapt as new developments arise. The dynamic nature of election cycles allows brands to make responsive adjustments, maintaining a balance between brand protection and performance.
Research shows that 67 pervcent of consumers are more likely to engage with ads on sites they trust, highlighting the importance of strategic ad placements. By combining brand safety with smart optimisation techniques, the DV Election Task Force ensures that advertisers can confidently navigate the high-stakes environment of elections without sacrificing their campaign goals or risking brand damage.
Q. When it comes to CTV while it is in an early stage, DoubleVerify offers pre-bid solutions. Could you shed light on this and on the CTV opportunity given that it is addressable?
DV’s pre-bid solutions for CTV ensure ad quality, including protecting against fraud, brand suitability, viewability and geo challenges in this growing space. As CTV is still in its early stages, it offers advertisers a unique opportunity to engage with audiences through precise, addressable reach similar to other digital channels.
This addressability makes CTV an attractive platform for personalised and performance-driven advertising. However, it also comes with challenges, including the complexity of managing quality across fragmented environments.
One significant concern in CTV is the rise of streaming fraud. Fraudsters target CTV’s high CPM inventory using AI-driven techniques to generate fake impressions and simulate human behaviour, creating artificial traffic. In 2023, DV observed a 58 percent increase in streaming fraud schemes, highlighting the need for proactive protection.
CTV environments are particularly vulnerable because of the difficulty in distinguishing between genuine and fraudulent users without advanced verification systems.
DV addresses these challenges through our CTV solutions to help advertisers measure and improve their quality inventory. DV’s AI-powered solutions evaluate impressions in real-time, blocking fraudulent or non-compliant placements and ensuring ads are only served in high-quality environments.
This proactive approach not only mitigates risks but also helps advertisers optimise their return on investment by reducing waste and ensuring campaigns reach genuine audiences. As CTV adoption grows, such pre-bid solutions will be essential in maintaining media quality and driving performance.
