Yahoo Puts Advertisers In Control with Independent Viewability and Fraud Verification

Partners with leading accredited, third party measurement companies to bring greater trust and transparency to digital advertising industry

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) announced the availability of independent viewability and fraud measurement for display and video advertising on Yahoo owned and operated (O&O) properties, as well as media purchased across its programmatic buying platform.

We hope the industry will follow Yahoo’s lead in working with independent, accredited companies like ours that are not involved in buying or selling media, as that is the only way to get a truly unbiased read-out on viewability and fraud.

Yahoo is partnering with third-party measurement companies that align with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Media Rating Council (MRC) to bring unbiased, accredited reporting for ad viewability and traffic fraud to the digital advertising industry. Advertisers running campaigns with Yahoo can choose from a variety of measurement solutions for greater transparency into campaign performance to ensure appropriate return on advertising spend, brand safety and ad effectiveness.

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“We’ve been investing in viewability and fraud measurement solutions to increase trust between advertisers and publishers for some time now,” said Dennis Buchheim, VP of product management at Yahoo. “At Yahoo, we believe advertisers should have the flexibility to verify viewability and fraud levels with the tools of their choice, which is why we’re partnering with leading, independent measurement companies to give our customers the confidence they deserve when running campaigns on our inventory and across the web.”

Yahoo has created an open environment where advertisers can choose from well-known, third-party measurement solutions from comScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, Moat, among others, to independently validate for viewability and fraud across display and video at every stage of the campaign lifecycle.

“Viewability and fraud continue to be major issues in the digital ad space, and it’s time for advertisers to demand accountability and transparency from publishers and technology providers,” said Scott Knoll, CEO of Integral Ad Science. “We hope the industry will follow Yahoo’s lead in working with independent, accredited companies like ours that are not involved in buying or selling media, as that is the only way to get a truly unbiased read-out on viewability and fraud.”

Advertisers stand to lose $6.3 billion globally to bots in 2015, according to ANA and WhiteOps. In addition, a recent report from the IAB recommends the campaign threshold for viewability should be 70 percent in order to significantly increase the performance of campaigns. Through its partnership with accredited, third-party measurement solutions, Yahoo is giving advertisers better visibility and control over their campaigns, while seeking to instill confidence that campaign traffic is generated by real content consumers.

“As an industry we continue to make great strides to improve the quality and effectiveness of digital media and to instill confidence from the world’s largest brands,” said Wayne Gattinella, CEO of DoubleVerify. “We applaud Yahoo for their leadership and initiative in providing open, third-party measurement across its sites and we look forward to building a more trustworthy digital supply chain together.”

About Yahoo

Yahoo is a guide focused on making users’ daily habits inspiring and entertaining. By creating highly personalized experiences for our users, we keep people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the world. In turn, we create value for advertisers by connecting them with the audiences that build their businesses. Yahoo is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and has offices located throughout the Americas, Asia Pacific (APAC) and the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.net) or the Company’s blog (yahoo.tumblr.com).

via BusinessWire