Meet the Challenger Adtech Firms Competing to Grab Oracle Advertising Clients

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.

Contextual targeting

These firms offer contextual targeting, one of the longest-running forms of ad targeting: using page and content signals to serve ads directly next to relevant content. Using the content rather than the audience as a means of targeting has made contextual targeting more attractive in the face of cookie deprecation.

Peer39

Quickly seizing the opportunity three weeks ago, contextual firm Peer39, founded in 2006, used LinkedIn to invite any Grapeshot clients looking to migrate to get in touch, (and for any staffers looking for work to apply).

Peer39 has had hundreds of inbounds across brands, agencies, DSPs and publishers. The vast majority of those conversations have led to transitioning over to using its products, (it wouldn’t say how much revenue this has generated), which include customized brand safety controls, contextual category targeting and post-campaign reporting.

Its CTV contextual solution especially has been a “big opportunity for us and an eye-opener for brands,” said Mario Diaz, CEO of Peer39.

The firm went private in 2019 (after its owner at the time Sizmek, went bankrupt), and hasn’t raised funding since. It works with all the major holding cos but wouldn’t share more specifics or the company headcount.

Pixability

Pixability, founded in 2008, has inked several deals recently focused on connecting YouTube creators of diverse communities with brands and agencies.

It has had over a dozen inbound leads that started coming in two weeks ago, mostly from agencies who know it specializes in YouTube and CTV data. It expects some of these conversations to turn into new business relationships, said CMO Matt Duffy.

“Each request has been different in terms of the type of data required,” said Duffy, “in general, many agencies we’ve spoken to haven’t been happy with Oracle data, have been stuck in the status quo and feel like this has been a good push to switch.”

Pixability has raised a total funding of $28 million through series C funding which closed in 2015, the company said. It has over 100 staffers globally and customers include Google, Coty and Avon.

Zefr

Zefr, which offers brand safety and suitability targeting and measurement on video in walled gardens, was founded in 2008. Over the last few weeks, it’s had inbound leads from five global brands and has been asked by all the holding companies to share how they would augment the migration from Oracle Advertising, said Andrew Serby, chief commercial officer. It’s also had inbounds from non-Oracle Advertising brands seeing this as an opportune time to re-assess their overall brand safety partnerships.

“When [brands] test out the technology of Zefr versus the legacy open web providers, they can see the transparency we provide versus a simple check-the-box number, which helps us differentiate from the legacy companies,” said Serby. “We’re calling this a verification unbundling moment.”

Zefr has raised $65.1 million over eight rounds, the company said. It is profitable and has 200 staffers. Current customers include Mazda, McCain Foods and retailer Marks and Spencer.

Contextual-based modeled audiences

Contextual-based models are amped-up versions of behavioral targeting and audience expansion techniques. They work by targeting ads to environments that are indirectly related to the interests of the audience, (people reading articles about healthy eating are still grouped into a “health-conscious” segment, but reading different content). These models predict which contexts are similar to the interests of the target audience, so ads are shown in places where potential customers are likely to be.

Illuma Technology

The U.K.-based contextual firm launched in 2017 and, across advertisers, agencies, platforms and publishers, it’s had over 100 meetings over the last few weeks with prospective clients.

Grapeshot founder John Snyder joined Illuma Technology in March 2022, with former Oracle exec Ryan McBride joining the following year to lead strategy and business development. Clients include Disney, Reckitt Benckiser and TUI. It secured a $2.46 million investment from Blackfinch and Praetura Ventures.

It recently signed a commercial license with the Guardian to categorize article pages and match advertising with its content, the first commercial agreement from the Guardian to use data from its site for contextual targeting purposes. Publishers have complained that ad verification firms have scraped their pages for profit-driving products without consent.

Dstillery

Custom audience firm Dstillery, founded in 2008, sent out an email blast on July 1 offering a simple three-step transition to any Oracle Advertising customers looking to make the switch, part of a broader and opportunistic marketing campaign that has been received “extremely positively,” said CEO Michael Beebe.

Since then, it’s had around five conversations with major platforms looking for it to help plug the holes left by Oracle’s exit across audience and contextual targeting.

“A lot of companies view Grapeshot as a backstop in the post-cookie era, and they realize that they need future-proof solutions beyond alt-IDs and contextual,” said Beebe.   

Dstillery has raised around $16 million to build its AI audience solutions business since 2018 from five institutional investors, the firm said. It has around 90 staffers.

Proximic by Comscore

Comscore acquired contextual ad targeting firm Proximic, which launched in 2007, in 2015. Digiday reported that it has heard from dozens of advertisers looking for a replacement for Oracle.

Proximic by Comscore has raised $10.4 million over four rounds, according to Crunchbase. Current customers include Blavity and agencies Omnicom Media Group and Epsilon.

Attention / advanced viewability

Over time, viewability has become considered a basic, essential metric rather than a unique selling point. But, over-indexing ad buys to viewability has contributed to the rise of MFA sites. In the last couple of years, vendors have looked to eye-tracking tech to estimate how much attention an ad placement will get, rather than whether or not it was viewable.

Adelaide

Attention vendor Adelaide, founded in 2019, has worked with Audi, Mars, Microsoft and AB InBev and has partnered with firms like TV measurement firm TVision, TripleLift and Yahoo to offer ways to buy inventory that guarantees audience.

“10 different publishers, agencies and advertisers have reached out looking for a way to replace viewability with a more advanced metric,” said CEO Marc Guldimann.

Adelaide raised a $7 million seed round in 2022, backed by Human Ventures.

Playground xyz (GumGum)

Founded in 2008, the contextual targeting company acquired attention vendor Playground xyz in December 2021, meaning it can offer both contextual targeting (through GumGum’s Verity) and attention measurement through Playground xyz.

It’s currently having over 75 conversations globally with former Oracle Advertising clients, the firm told ADWEEK.

“These verification companies offer customers a one-stop-shop for media measurement,” said Rob Hall, global president of data at GumGum, but “they aren’t known for being the most advanced in specific areas.”

In 2021, GumGum raised $75 million from Goldman Sachs, bringing its funding total to $122 million. Customers include T-Mobile, Disney and Clorox, and it has 600 staffers globally.

Specialist fraud tech

Like death and taxes, fraud is as good as certain in digital media. With new types of fraud cropping up, detection companies are evolving, using AI, automation and data science to create a variety of tools and methodologies, from preventing fraudulent clicks on ads, identifying and mitigating the impact of bot traffic and verifying media quality.

Adalytics

Adalytics has amassed a ton of media attention over the last two years for its fraud reports. These have also gone some way to contribute to critics’ questions about how effective traditional ad verification firms are.

Its tech analyses brand media spend, but just a small part of this relates to fraud. For instance, a brand could learn how much of its ad spend goes to MFA sites. It hasn’t had a noticeable uptick in inbound leads over the last month. Aside from offering media analytics beyond fraud detection, the firm differentiates by only working with brands on the buy side to avoid conflicts of interest.

DeepSee.io

DeepSee, which started in 2021, has had two former Oracle Advertising clients get in touch, one of which is already using its platform, said CEO and co-founder Rocky Moss

While other firms might have a viewability or IVT product, DeepSee rates the quality of publishers based on the experience of using the site and provides raw data around site behaviors detected by its crawlers. Rather than telling an advertiser whether an impression is viewable, its data might say that a site has an average number of ad units in view at a time that account for a certain percentage of the total visible screen.

DeepSee and Jounce Media have worked with trade bodies to define and verify MFA sites.

Human Security

Human, formerly White Ops, has been offering fraud protection for 12 years and helps prevent fraudulent ads pre-bid with server-to-server integrations, evaluating each impression before it reaches the auction.

“We’ve certainly seen a recent uptick as customers seize the opportunity to upgrade their protection,” said Geoff Stupay, vp of media Strategy at HUMAN. “We verify the humanity of 20 trillion interactions each week, providing unique visibility to not only identify fraud but takedown bad actors.”

Current customers include One View by Roku, FanDuel and Yeti.