Google Agrees to YouTube Metrics Audit to Ease Advertisers' Concerns
February 21 2017 - 7:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Mike Shields
It's tax season for Americans, and apparently it's audit season
for digital media.
Alphabet Inc.'s Google is committing to a series of audits for
its web video powerhouse YouTube by the ad industry's measurements
watchdog, the Media Rating Council. Less than two weeks ago,
Facebook also announced it had agreed to have some of its ad
metrics audited by the MRC.
Specifically, Google said the MRC will audit the way that three
independent metrics companies -- Moat, Integral Ad Science and
DoubleVerify -- collect data measuring whether video ads are
viewable on YouTube and how long they are viewed. Those audits will
evaluate everything from the technology being used and how it's
integrated on YouTube's website and app to the way the data is
crunched.
In addition, Google plans to have the MRC audit data for ads on
non-Google sites purchased via two key Google ad buying tech
platforms -- AdWords and DoubleClick Bid Manager.
These audits should be welcome news in the digital ad industry,
where marketers have been pushing for more transparency and overall
assurance that the ads they pay for end up where they are supposed
to and can be seen by consumers.
Companies like Google and Facebook, which dominate the online ad
industry, have faced criticisms that they have been "grading their
own homework" because they have traditionally collected and
self-reported so much of their own viewer data. While marketers
lean on third-party metrics companies that have approval to work
with the platforms, those metrics firms aren't always allowed to
directly do their own measurements and instead receive and record
data provided to them by YouTube or Facebook.
"Our data has to be trusted and comprehensive. We are very in
tune with the idea," said Babak Pahlavan, Google's senior director
of product management, analytics solutions and measurement. Mr.
Pahlavan said that Google's move had been in the works for years
and wasn't a reaction to industry pressure or Facebook's recent
announcement.
Given YouTube's scale (it reaches a billion people and every day
its users stream hundreds of millions of hours of videos), it's a
massive challenge to conduct such integrations, but the goal is to
complete the process over the next two quarters, Mr. Pahlavan
added.
He noted that Google has already had 30 of its various ad
metrics audited by the MRC -- including for several other YouTube
ad products -- and has been working with the measurement
standard-bearer for more than a decade. "We've been investing in
trust for a long time," he said.
Over the past several years, a large number of media companies
have agreed to work with third parties like Moat or DoubleVerify to
track viewability data. And these third parties have individually
been audited by the MRC.
But because giant platforms like YouTube and Facebook have been
reluctant to implement third party tracking code from these vendors
directly, there has been some ongoing frustration in the ad buying
community that these companies' data is less transparent than
others.
On top of that, Facebook has had a number of embarrassing data
tracking mishaps, adding to the noise surrounding third party
measurement and fueling the idea that the web's biggest ad
platforms play by their own rules.
"What's happening now is that this data is generally in the
control of large platforms, and it's a little bit of a black box,"
said DoubleVerify President and Chief Executive Wayne Gattinella,
who added that his company has been working on helping Google
provide more transparent metrics for roughly a year.
"The market is saying, 'We want to ensure that the process
[these companies employ] is understood, and is documented and
accurate. Otherwise, it could be garbage in garbage out, and we're
not able to determine that.' So this is all good news."
Bob Liodice, chief executive of the Association of National
Advertisers, a trade group for marketers, agreed and called
Facebook's and Google's recent audit commitments "a turning
point."
Mr. Liodice said that last year's bombshell report on the
overall lack of transparent practices in the ad agency world, along
with a recent speech by Procter & Gamble's Chief Brand Officer
Marc Pritchard calling for the industry to clean up its act, have
combined to elevate the data transparency issue.
"The digital media supply chain is in bad shape, and people are
taking good hard looks, asking, 'Is this the best way to spend my
money?'" he said.
Mr. Liodice said he hopes Google's and Facebook's moves help put
more advertisers' minds at ease and potentially demystify the way
they operate.
"Why would you want to be called a walled garden?" he said.
"That's a horrible reputation to have. You want to be seen as open.
If you look like you have something to hide, that's not a good
place to be."
Write to Mike Shields at mike.shields@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 21, 2017 07:14 ET (12:14 GMT)
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