Innovid adds VAST inventory support across major vendors

Wednesday, July 18th, 2018
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Innovid Bolsters Digital Video Viewability with VAST Inventory Support Across Major Vendors, Increasing Transparency for Brand Marketers

  • Collaborates with comScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, and Oracle’s Moat to Expand Measurement Capabilities Across More Video Inventory

NEW YORK — Innovid, the world’s leading video marketing platform, today announced support for third party viewability measurement from all major vendors in VAST inventory, which accounts for the bulk of digital video impressions. Complete video viewability measurement was previously only available in VPAID inventory, which requires an additional layer of code, and has less scale across the digital video advertising ecosystem. Better support for measurement in VAST inventory is important because consumers are increasingly choosing to watch videos on mobile and across connected TV devices, where VAST is more commonly used than VPAID.

VAST, or the Video Ad Serving Template, is the omnipresent mechanism supporting delivery of video ads to video players across all devices and media properties. Recent releases from the IAB, one of the digital advertising industry’s main trade associations, have proposed a standardized mechanism for applying measurement capabilities across all VAST inventory, known by the technical name OMID (Open Measurement Interface Definition). The OMID initiative garnered broad support across the industry, including leading measurement companies comScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, and Oracle, through its measurement platform Moat.

In April, the IAB Tech Lab launched the OM SDK (Open Measurement Software Development Kit), which brought OMID measurement capabilities to previously unmeasurable mobile in-app inventory, and in June the IAB Tech Lab introduced the initial web version of OMID alongside a new version of VAST (4.1). This latest announcement also provides guidance on how to apply the OMID measurement standard to pre-existing versions of VAST, to encourage faster adoption of OMID across the industry.

For agencies and advertisers, the arrival of viewability for VAST means better measurement coverage across available inventory, pending publisher adoption. As an open platform enabler of third-party measurement providers, Innovid will make it easier for brands to activate these measurement capabilities, using whatever partner they choose to work with.

“Viewability is a market necessity for buyers, and blind spots with certain devices and inventory need to be eliminated,” said Michael Tuminello, Vice President of Solutions and Partnerships, Innovid. “That’s why we are happy to be working with other market leaders to close a gap in the market, and encourage publishers without VPAID support to implement measurement support in VAST inventory as soon as possible, starting with currently unmeasurable but highly desirable mobile in-app inventory.”

“As a trusted source in measurement, comScore helps media buyers and sellers quantify their consumers’ multiscreen behaviors so they can make business decisions with confidence,” said Felix Hansen, vice president of Product, comScore. “We applaud and fully support the IAB’s Open Measurement initiative to simplify the measurement of growing advertising platforms, like mobile and over-the-top (OTT). comScore will continue to work with partners – like Innvoid – to drive the industry forward by delivering consistent, cross-platform measurement to the entire advertising ecosystem.”

“DoubleVerify is fully committed to the OMID and OM SDK as the standard for measurement within mobile apps,” said Saar Paamoni, Vice President of Product, DoubleVerify. “Our latest integration with Innovid is a great step forward and will promote the adoption of the video viewability measurement via the OM SDK and for web video in the future.”

“As the founder of the Open Measurement initiative, Integral Ad Science is a firm believer in standardization where it is beneficial to the industry and happy to have a partner like Innovid helping to move the needle in that direction,” said Dale Older, Senior Vice President of Product, IAS. “We’ve already made tremendous strides to measure and optimize mobile in-app inventory, like our first-to-market in-app pre-bid segments for programmatic buys.”

“Extending Moat measurement across more inventory is a natural progression following our contributions in bringing the OM SDK to life,” said Dan Fichter, Vice President, Software Development, Oracle Data Cloud and Head of Engineering, Moat. “As part of the Oracle Data Cloud, our ability to provide marketers with insights into the whole customer journey is only valuable if those insights are unclouded by viewability issues. We look forward to collaborating with Innovid to provide these benefits as we continue to work on solutions to improve measurement and transparency across all devices for the industry at large.”

The new solutions to support viewability across additional inventory are available immediately on supporting publishers.