Beta reveals 28% of impressions delivered against negative page content and 12% delivered to non-video pages
London – Sizmek Inc. (SZMK), a global open ad management company that delivers multiscreen campaigns, announced that its Video Verification tool is available for all video ad serving customers beginning mid-July. Initial results of the Sizmek Video verification beta program revealed that 28% of the 1.23 billion video impressions served across numerous advertisers from January-May 2014 were delivered on pages with negative content. Additionally, 12% of impressions were delivered in non-video environments such as in-banner ads, rich media video, or thumbnail-sized players, meaning those media dollars were essentially wasted.
Video verification provides advertisers with a clear picture of the quality of a video advertising campaign, which can be highly varied between publishers and advertising placements. Compared to display advertising, online video advertising is relatively nascent, with limited inventory, and sometimes of questionable quality. This makes the assessment of brand safety and page context, two primary elements of verification, far more difficult to determine for video ads without specialized tools.
“We participated in the beta for Sizmek’s Video Verification as we are keen to maximize the impact of our clients’ media dollars,” said Jonathan Zajicek, Analytics and Research Director at Havas. “The initial insights we gained from the video verification tool have given us a far better understanding of how we’re spending our media dollars with online video.”
Many advertisers imagine their online video ads will be appearing in large, prominent video players at the center of the publisher page. In reality, there is only a limited amount of quality video inventory available. The result is that many ad units are served within display banner ads. Often times, these videos do not require the user to initiate playback of the video; they simply “auto-play.” Regardless of how the video was played, the advertiser still pays.
“Verifying the placement of media is important to advertisers and is often a challenge in digital due to the complex nature of ad purchase and delivery.  In surfacing and understanding the issues in media buying, we can then take steps to manage and prevent these placements,” said Siobhan Crowe, Global Digital Advertising Manager at RB. “We have already gained significant insights as a beta partner in Sizmek’s video verification program about the performance and impact of our online video campaigns.”
Sizmek’s new Video Verification tool analyzes site and domain information for brand safety, page context, geographic information, and device information. In addition, it includes page quality relating to video, including video player position, player size, detection of multiple players, detection of non-video pages, ad starts and auto-play units.
“Our customers are actively seeking a verification solution for video that includes dynamics specific to video placement quality, in addition to information on the pages where the ads appear,” says Ricky Liversidge, Sizmek CMO and Head of Product. “Video verification is a critical step to deliver on the promise of online video as a premium channel.”
Video Verification from Sizmek also delivers the benefits of third-party video ad serving, providing users with access to verifiable independent data, with standardized measurement across the majority of publishers on every campaign via Sizmek MDX.  Using the Sizmek MDX open ad management platform also allows for unified campaign workflow, which saves time; reduces errors; and requires no additional tagging for data solutions such as Sizmek’s Video Verification.
About Sizmek
Sizmek Inc. (SZMK) fuels digital advertising campaigns for advertisers and agencies around the world with cutting-edge technology to engage audiences across any screen. For the last 15 years, the online business that is now Sizmek has proudly pioneered industry firsts in digital, including rich media, video and online targeted advertising across channels. Sizmek`s open ad management stack, Sizmek MDX, delivers the most creative and impactful multiscreen digital campaigns, across mobile, display, rich media, video and social, all powered by an unrivaled data platform. With New York City as a center of operations, Sizmek connects over 13,000 advertisers and over 5,000 agencies to audiences, serving more than 1.5 trillion impressions a year. Sizmek operates on the ground in 48 countries with a team of over 850 employees. For more information visit www.sizmek.com
