Press: AdExchanger - When Spending Digital Budgets, Brands Have a Battle

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in spending on programmatic TV and video.

Today’s column is written by Stephen Upstone, CEO and founder ofLoopMe.

Brand marketers hire media agencies to streamline the advertising process, remove barriers and deliver clear and measurable ROI. The recent news that the MRC suspended two DoubleClick For Publishers metrics and the controversy over Facebook’s measurement methodology suggest digital is not delivering on this promise.

As an industry, digital is maybe the worst culprit for creating an impenetrable environment, full of acronyms, viewability issues and performance analytics that are impossible for time-poor marketers to understand.

It doesn’t need to be this way. There’s no reason we can’t make digital clear, understandable and transparent across the board. That includes verification and the use of metrics and KPIs that help brands truly measure performance, particularly as newer formats gain popularity, such as video and virtual reality.

Third-party tracking for viewability and brand safety should always be in place. No matter how big or small, ad tech providers should be able to give evidence that their campaign delivered in view, in brand-safe environments, to human traffic.

Roughly 53% of campaigns are not viewable, despite the topic being at the top of conference agendas for at least two years. Only now after its recent measurement controversy is Facebook providing third-party viewability data for display campaigns, but it still won’t allow buyers to use their own trackers.

Read the full article here.