COLOGNE — Transparency and fraud issues allowed by ad-tech platforms are now clearing up, but there is still a way to go
That is the assessment of the woman tasked with ensuring brand safety throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa for the world’s largest media investment group.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, GroupM EMEA senior brand safety director Bethan Crockett says: “We’ve seen quite a lot of improvement, especially across the contextual brand safety. There’s been a conscientious push across all members of the ecosystem to improve viewability.
“We still have challenges around ad fraud, especially across all different types of devices and platforms, because the technology that we use to detect doesn’t necessarily work in a unified way across the board in those platforms – for example, mobile.”
Since P&G’s Marc Pritchard lit the blue touch paper for transparency concerns in January 2017, ad-tech platforms have raced to profess their own capabilities.
The surge of scepticism has prompted some to change business model in response to a customers’ demand for more visibility in to practices.
The improvements are such that Crockett now suggests brands lay down a redefined baseline for what constitutes a “digital impression” – “a fair opportunity to be seen, minimal risk from ad fraud, in a safe environment for the advertiser, and can be measured by independent third parties”.
This interview is part of a series titled Advertising Reimagined: The View from DMEXCO 2018, presented by Criteo. Please find more videos from the series here.