IPG Mediabrands targets viewability and fraud with new initiative

IPG Mediabrands Australia is launching a media-industry initiative to focus on 100% viewable and fraud-free delivery of digital media bookings. By the end of November, all Mediabrands clients will have their own access to bespoke real-time reports that will identify their digital media placements.
Mediabrands’ investment and intelligence division Magna Global is leading the initiative, called Project Quality, that will be available across all divisions and clients of the group including major media agencies UM and Initiative. The project has been 18 months in development and is designed to instigate action in all sectors of digital media placement, including exchanges and publishers.
Every IPG Mediabrands client will have access to a dynamic Quality Assurance Report (see graphic) that details current levels of viewability, site quality and on-target delivery of every measureable impression. Clients and Mediabrands executives will view the data on individual dashboards that have been developed within the media group.

Maria Grivas (pictured), head of digital for Magna Global, said, “We believe that the broader industry – agencies, exchanges, advertisers and publishers – needs to actively strive towards 100% viewable and fraud-free digital delivery. We are launching Project Quality to prompt more action across the industry.”
Grivas added, “Whilst 100% may be an ambitious goal today, it should not limit our ultimate goal. By collaborating with publishers and exchanges we are aiming to maximise adoption and therefore campaign effectiveness. To that end, we have agreed to accept a publisher’s viewability measure provided it’s from an industry accredited third party and an IPG Mediabrands approved vendor.”
Jess White, managing director of Mediabrands’ independent programmatic agency Cadreon, sees this as a positive step forward for programmatic. “Traditional metrics are somewhat limiting as they ignore the ‘quality’ variable which has a significant impact on clients’ brands and performance,” said White.
She added, “Cadreon has been optimising towards quality metrics for more than 12 months and we have seen CPAs almost halve in instances where we have shifted the in-view percentage by 30% or more. In video, where we are verifying the in-target accuracy of audience recall, scores have improved by 11%-23%. Scale vs 100% ‘quality’ remains a persistent challenge but Project Quality is a strong leap in the right direction.”
The Quality Assurance Reports available to IPG Mediabrands clients will become a core optimisation tool for all digital campaigns, monitored and developed continually by client teams and Mediabrands’ centralised technology unit.
Grivas said that Project Quality would continue to evolve from its launch phase. “New technologies, opportunities and challenges are constantly developing in the digital ad space and we will continue to advance Project Quality to keep pace with the market. Using our internal technology experts, we will develop new specialisations in areas that deepen our knowledge of accuracies and efficiencies in digital delivery.”
Source: IPG Mediabrands