As Oracle Advertising winds down—with it, contextual firm Grapeshot and media quality firm Moat—ad verification firms like Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify are in the best position to scoop up former clients, (neither has said how many inbound leads they’ve had).
But marketers, agencies and publishers have grown increasingly suspicious of the traditional ad verification firms over the last few years as the programmatic ecosystem seems to be sprouting new ills. A glut of undetected made-for-advertising sites, continued ad fraud, and overzealous use of brand-safety blocking tools have made advertisers look for other solutions.
Critics also point to ad verification firms’ creep into the sell side, said at least two ad buyer sources and two adtech sources. The same company offering audience segmentation and then auditing the quality of those audiences doesn’t sit right, spurring buyers to look for more independent intermediaries.
That’s opened up the doors for a raft of adtech firms looking to fill the gaps.
Broadly, ad verification firms have three main pillars of products: brand safety, viewability and fraud. These firms often offer overlapping services. Here are some of the adtech challengers, according to industry experts, welcoming those former Oracle Advertising clients with open arms.
Generalist ad verification vendors
These firms include IAS and DV and have been seen as a one-stop-shop for agencies, offering brand safety, fraud, viewability and trying to incorporate new features, including contextual targeting and attention measurement.
Adloox
Several major global advertisers, fewer than 10, have launched significant RFPs with Adloox following the discontinuation of Moat.
France-based Adloox has been in the ad verification business since 2009. Its popular features include brand safety protection, viewability and fraud prevention. Its attention measurement product has been gaining attention from former Moat clients.
Its main advantage, the firm said, is its technological integrations, covering the open web with Google, retail with Amazon Ads, and social with Meta, all with a unified measurement solution which aim to simplify the work of media buyers.
Earlier this month, it started layering Scope3’s emissions data to its ad verification platform, helping advertisers improve sustainability across media buys. It has over 300 customers including brands, agencies and buy-side tech platforms. It has 30 staffers.