Tag: Integral Ad Science

More than ever, brands seek performance solutions to drive efficiency and maximise outcomes on their ad spend. Fueled by the rise of digital platforms, automation tools, and sophisticated analytics, marketing performance has empowered businesses to optimise campaigns in real-time, ensuring that every dollar spent contributes to tangible results. Higher quality media leads to higher return on ad spends for customers. 

The performance landscape is evolving rapidly, presenting businesses with opportunities and challenges. As competition intensifies, brand equity becomes a crucial differentiator, influencing consumer trust, loyalty, and long-term growth. Marketers are shifting their focus from short-term conversions to building stronger, recognisable brands that drive sustained engagement and customer lifetime value. 

In our latest What’s NEXT in Marketing interview, we sat down with Laura Quigley, senior vice president for Asia-Pacific at Integral Ad Science (IAS) to discuss how to navigate the changing landscape in marketing performance, the role of attention, and how marketers can strategically build brand equity through context-driven campaigns that foster consumer trust, enhance brand recognition, and drive long-term engagement while maintaining precise audience targeting. 

Future-proofing campaigns for impactful results

For Laura, driving performance equates to driving efficiency and outcomes, helping advertisers reduce media waste and safeguard brand equity in the evolving media landscape. Building and protecting brand equity, strategic brand positioning, and multi-channel strategies will drive brand performance in 2025, which has become essential.

“Brands are adopting more context-driven, personalised approaches while leveraging diverse channels like the open web, social platforms, connected TV (CTV), and digital video to engage consumers effectively, strengthening brand recall and fostering consumer trust”, she stated.

She also noted how marketers should be able to navigate these new changes, stating, “Marketers can future-proof campaigns by optimising placements, reallocating budgets based on attention outcomes, and ensuring brand-suitable environments. This ensures measurable, impactful results while enhancing ROI in a dynamic, consumer-first environment.”

In response to these new trends, IAS aims to help its clients protect and strengthen brand equity while driving performance by combining cutting-edge technology with actionable insights to safeguard brand reputation. 

“Through advanced tools like Context Control and Quality Impression™, IAS helps advertisers place their ads adjacent to brand-suitable and high-quality environments,” Laura added

How can thoughtful measurement improve campaign efficiency?

One of the things that Laura highlighted is that when ads are placed in contextually relevant environments, they not only protect brand equity but also drive stronger engagement and outcomes.

An instance of this in action is IAS’s partnership with Mastercard in Southeast Asia to support their global brand safety benchmark of 98% while reducing fail rates and invalid traffic in programmatic campaigns.

For context, Mastercard desired to receive real-time performance signals to help them efficiently optimise their campaigns before bids are placed on possible unsuitable environments. Moreover, the global financial brand needed a trusted global pre- and post-bid verification partner who could help execute an increased brand safety pass rate, reduce block rate/fail rates and reduce invalid traffic.

By implementing IAS’s pre- and post-bid solutions—including Contextual Avoidance and Fraud Detection—Mastercard achieved around 82% improvement in invalid traffic and 72% improvement in cost of quality impression.

For Laura, the partnership highlights how thoughtful measurement and optimisation can improve campaign efficiency while supporting broader brand goals.

“Marketers can benefit from setting clear safety and suitability guidelines, using pre-bid solutions to prioritise high-quality environments, and analysing campaign insights to refine their approaches. By embedding these practices, brands can drive performance while building long-term consumer trust,” she explained.

How to maintain brand equity while balancing results

Laura admits that looking ahead, driving performance will continue to operate in a complex and dynamic environment shaped by a fragmented media landscape and evolving consumer behaviours. 

For her, these shifts will likely present challenges in maintaining strong brand equity while delivering measurable results. To foster performance, Laura shares his three-pronged approach to how brands should navigate these challenges:

  • Attention and media quality metrics: Metrics that measure attention, engagement and media quality ensure that campaigns drive meaningful interactions and relationships between brands and consumers that strengthen brand equity.
  • Personalisation at scale: Effective personalisation goes beyond audience targeting and into contextual relevance. By aligning ads with the right content, brands can enhance engagement while maintaining efficiency. Contextual strategies ensure that messaging resonates at the right moments, strengthening consumer connections. 
  • Consistency across multi-channel strategies: As advertisers leverage various platforms, seamless integration and cohesive messaging are critical. This consistency strengthens brand identity and drives performance for long-term growth.

“Performance must shift to strategies that not only drive measurable results but also strengthen brand equity. Brands are increasingly leveraging contextual targeting, first-party data, and privacy-safe solutions to build trust with consumers and maintain compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA,” she said.

Laura also added, “Through transparent, granular reporting, IAS ensures brands have visibility into campaign performance and ad placement. IAS helps brands achieve measurable outcomes while fostering trust with consumers and advertisers.”

Flexibility and commitment to innovation

When asked about her advice for marketers to future-proof their brand equity and performance strategies, Laura mentioned that Marketers need to be agile and adaptable in their strategies. Moreover, prioritising trust and transparency through strategies like contextual targeting to engage audiences is fundamental. 

“Although third-party cookies continue to play a role, adopting new technologies and solutions is essential to ensure accurate optimisation and measurement. This is where attention-based measurements would provide deeper insight into engagement and allow marketers to optimise campaigns effectively,” she explained.

“By maintaining flexibility and committing to innovation, marketers can navigate these changes while building meaningful connections with their audience, ensuring long-term success in a privacy-first world,” she concluded.

***

The future of performance and brand equity lies in balancing data-driven precision and consumer engagement. Leveraging contextual targeting and privacy-compliant measurement tools will allow marketers to optimise performance while ensuring contextual and high-quality engagements. Ultimately, brands prioritising marketing effectiveness and data responsibility will drive sustainable growth and strengthen long-term brand equity in an increasingly privacy-centric digital landscape.

Context-driven advertising strategies are reshaping the way brands connect with their audiences, ensuring campaigns resonate in environments that amplify their message. Programmatic advertising, long heralded for its precision and scalability, is evolving beyond basic targeting to embrace the nuances of context. 

By aligning ads with content that complements a brand’s identity and objectives, advertisers can achieve a deeper, more meaningful engagement with consumers. As audiences grow increasingly savvy, context becomes a critical differentiator, bridging the gap between delivering ads that disrupt and those that add value.

For marketers and advertisers, embracing context is no longer optional; it’s necessary to foster trust, safeguard reputation, and drive results that resonate. As the industry moves forward, the ability to align messaging with the right environment will be pivotal for navigating the complexities of the digital advertising ecosystem.

In this case study, we explore how Samsung and Mindshare Indonesia sought cookieless solutions via Integral Ad Science’s (IAS) Context Control Targeting product to propel Samsung’s programmatic campaign goals while prioritising budget efficiency.

The Challenge

Despite Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Z Fold4 achieving stunning results in 2022, Samsung Indonesia recognises that reaching its core Gen MZ target audience will be more challenging in 2023 due to the fast-paced environment and evolving consumer behaviour. Samsung has consistently employed sophisticated targeting strategies, incorporating first-party data with retargeting, maintaining a presence with premium publishers, and utilising keyword targeting.

The Objective

Samsung aims to launch its latest foldable phone and use programmatic advertising to target Gen MZ precisely, particularly during the sustenance phase of the campaign. Applying lessons from previous campaigns, Samsung adopted a more granular targeting approach for the new foldable phone. This is to ensure the delivery of relevant messaging to the target audience while simultaneously improving efficiency in terms of quality website traffic by 20%.

The Solution

As Samsung’s campaign transitioned from awareness to performance, the focus shifted to driving quality traffic and conversions. Display advertising, representing 12% of the budget and executed programmatically, emerged as a key driver of high-value site visits. 

To maximise the effectiveness of this channel, Samsung implemented IAS’s contextual targeting with sentiment detection. This technology layered an additional level of precision, enabling Samsung to refine its audience targeting beyond traditional methods like DSPs, DMPs, Floodlight, and PMPs. 

IAS’s predictive science pre-screens and categorises pages using emotion & sentiment analysis, enabling the brand to target the most desirable and relevant content.

To drive campaign efficiency, Samsung implemented a three-layered optimisation strategy within programmatic display and its targeting setup. This strategy encompassed audience segmentation, budget allocation, and creative optimisation.

  1. Audience Level: In addition to standard DSP audiences, floodlight, and PMP, Samsung leveraged third-party audiences through IAS’s contextual targeting with sentiment detection. This included segments like:
    1. Consumer Electronics – Samsung 
    2. Consumer Electronics – Smartphones, Tablets
    3. Consumer Electronics – Wearables
    4. Tech Enthusiasts
  2. Budget Optimisation: Budgets were dynamically adjusted based on weekly performance. DSP audience budgets were reduced and reallocated to resources directed towards higher-performing third-party audiences by almost 66%.
  3. Contextual Relevance and Asset Optimisation: To maximise impact, Samsung prioritised contextual relevance and optimised asset size for message delivery. 

This three-layered approach provided Samsung with detailed metrics on inventory quality, traffic quality, and click-through rates. The contextual targeting layer offered deeper insights into page sentiment and emotion, enabling more precise campaign alignment. This cookieless targeting strategy fostered confidence and provided valuable data to drive superior campaign results.

The Results

The campaign was able to drive efficiency for Samsung Indonesia. Testing new audience targeting delivered 57% lower cost per quality traffic, 300% higher CTR, and 65% lower cost per click compared to the second-best targeting alternative. 

  • Volume of measured impressions: 39 million impressions 
  • 300% higher CTR than the next best-performing line item (data hub)
  • 57% cheaper cost per marketing visit compared to the next best-performing line item which is PMP Premium Publisher

IAS’s contextual targeting solution managed to deliver the ads to the relevant content, which aligns with research showing that relevant ads have higher receptivity, favorability, and memorability for the audience. This means that the audience will tend to interact more with the ad, giving Samsung ads a higher chance of being clicked. This resulted in higher traffic and quality traffic for Samsung. 

Post the campaign, IAS’s analysis found that the contextual targeting managed to deliver the best results, across all media metrics: CTR, cost per visit, cost per quality traffic, and even cost per add-to-cart.

Singapore – Integral Ad Science (IAS) has announced and exclusive first-to-market content-level brand safety and suitability measurement for advertisers on Kwai for Business, the commercial platform of social media video app Kwai.

This partnership with Kwai supports IAS’s long-term international expansion strategy. Advertisers focused on LATAM and APAC markets now have an additional layer of trusted, third-party transparency. In Brazil and Indonesia alone, they will be able to reach a base of over 100 million monthly active users. 

Powered by IAS’s Multimedia Technology, IAS Brand Safety and Suitability Measurement for Kwai utilizes responsible AI for frame-by-frame analysis, combining image, audio, and text signals to accurately classify content at scale, including misinformation, aligned to industry standards. 

Moreover, Through trusted, third-party daily reporting in IAS Signal, IAS’s unified reporting platform, advertisers can ensure their ads are driving engagement and reaching real users with key metrics including Viewability, Time-in-View, Percent Completed, IVT Rate, and more.

Marcia Byrne, managing director for LATAM at IAS, said, “We are excited to enhance IAS’s partnership with Kwai for Business, as we empower Brazilian and Indonesian marketers with a best-in-class solution to improve media quality and reduce brand risk. Now, advertisers have additional assurance that their ads on Kwai reach real users in brand-safe and suitable environments.”

Meanwhile, Vitor Yu, general manager at Kwai for Business LATAM, commented, “Third-party measurement is critical to Kwai, and demonstrates our commitment to building a safe environment and providing advertisers with the right tools they need to grow with Kwai. Our partnership with IAS equips our clients with the precise insights to understand where their ads are appearing and how they’re performing on Kwai so they can continue to meet their campaign goals on our platform.” 

Singapore – Integral Ad Science (IAS) has unveiled plans to expand into China, aiming to equip global advertisers with advanced solutions for invalid traffic (IVT), fraud detection, and brand safety and suitability measurement, tailored to meet both international and local standards.

IAS aims to enter the world’s second-largest advertising market to support advertisers tapping into China’s growing digital media potential. With digital ad spending in China expected to surpass $140 billion in 2024, IAS aims to deliver greater value and results for its clients.

Moreover, this expansion aligns with IAS’s long-term international growth strategy, addressing a critical need for advertisers seeking comprehensive measurement coverage across global markets. 

Through the establishment of a subsidiary in China and its role as a founding member of IAB China, IAS will also provide dedicated local support to Chinese advertisers aiming to expand their reach globally.

IAS has collaborated with global luxury clients, many with significant media investments in China, to develop this market initiative. The company emphasised that they are dedicated to working with industry partners to create solutions tailored to China’s unique advertising landscape.

“IAS is one of the only measurement solutions able to meet the unique demands of the Chinese market, and we’re aiming to fill a crucial gap in coverage for advertisers,” said Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS. 

“With an expanded footprint, we will empower advertisers with actionable data they need to maximise their return on investments and support their growth in this dynamic and evolving digital advertising landscape,” she added. 

Tracy Cui, vice secretary-general CAA at IAB China, also shared, “IAS and IAB China are pleased to be working together to provide international brands with better access to global standards in China and helping to bring new technologies to the market.”

Earlier this year, IAS announced expansions into key APAC markets, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, alongside senior leadership appointments. Its APAC operations now span a wide network, covering Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Singapore – Integral Ad Science (IAS) has announced the launch of IAS Curation with Google Ad Manager. IAS will now offer programmatic buyers a deal-based enrichment pathway designed to curate inventory at the source that meets the benchmarks for advertisers across context, brand safety and viewability while driving better performance, at scale. 

IAS Curation empowers advertisers with actionable data to activate avoidance and contextual targeting strategies across media buys at scale for Google Ad Manager. To maximise brand suitability, advertisers are able to consolidate bidding on high quality inventory and precisely target contextually relevant content to drive efficiency for their ad buys. 

IAS’s predictive science pre-screens pages and categorises them, enabling brands to seamlessly identify inventory most desirable while avoiding content that is unsuitable. 

With IAS Curation, advertisers running programmatic campaigns can now incorporate IAS enrichment to tailor supply before it reaches their buying platform. Moreover, IAS’s natural language processing-powered contextual classification enables advertisers to target only relevant, quality content so advertisers can avoid content their brand does not align with. 

Lastly, with contextual avoidance, brand safety & suitability, and MFA filtration available before it reaches a bidder, advertisers can reduce waste and maximise ROI using AI-driven measurement & optimisation.

Srishti Gupta, chief product officer at IAS, said, “Brand suitability and contextual relevance are top priorities for programmatic buyers who are looking to avoid wasting ad spend on poor quality inventory such as MFA or ad clutter. IAS Curation gives programmatic buyers on Google Ad Manager a way to elevate their supply strategy and efficiently maximise returns on their media investments through AI-driven optimisation.”

Singapore – Integral Ad Science, a global media measurement and optimisation platform, has unveiled a first-to-market advertising solution with Meta. The solution is set to be released by early 2025 for all advertisers.

The third-party Content Block List solution ensures better advertisement placement for advertisers on Facebook and Instagram feeds and reels. Through the tool, advertisers can automatically avoid placing their ads next to content unsuitable for the brand.

The Content Block List allows social optimisation, customisation, seamless activation, and accurate classification through artificial intelligence. Additionally, IAS provides end-to-end campaign support for advertisers.

IAS has completed its testing for Content Level Block Lists, ensuring performance improvements and brand suitability.

“As the first provider to test this solution with Meta, we are delighted to enable advertisers to drive engagement and reach users in brand suitable, contextually relevant environments across Meta’s platform. Our Content Block Lists improve media quality while reducing brand risk for advertisers by providing industry-aligned tools that enable them to avoid content they deem unsuitable and safely scale their campaigns,” Lisa Utzschneider, chief executive officer of IAS, said.

“This solution demonstrates our continued commitment to provide global advertisers more tools to support their brand suitability goals. Alongside Meta’s inventory filter for Feed and Reels, we’re excited to give advertisers even more control over where their content appears on our platform,” Samantha Stetson, vice president, of client council and industry trades at Meta, said.

Singapore – Integral Ad Science (IAS) has announced that it will offer its industry-aligned misinformation brand safety and suitability reporting for advertisers running campaigns across YouTube ad inventory. With this, IAS can now detect content across YouTube that it identifies as misinformation enabling advertisers to further verify the safety and suitability of their digital media investments on YouTube.

IAS’s ‘Total Media Quality’ (TMQ) product suite provides valuable third-party assurance that advertisers’ campaigns are running adjacent to brand safe and suitable content. IAS’s misinformation measurement delivers independent verification, complementary to YouTube’s own policies and procedures. 

It is worth noting that IAS classifies content according to industry-aligned definitions and provides reporting based on advertisers’ custom brand suitability settings. Video-level reporting provided by IAS allows advertisers to get a full, accurate picture of the content their ads are running adjacent to, and adjust their campaigns based on their own desired suitability profiles. 

With this, advertisers can gain trusted video-level insights into the content adjacent to their advertisements according to industry-aligned definitions, analyse if the ads appear next to content identified by IAS as misinformation and make optimisations as needed to drive brand suitability, and access global reporting with more than 30 languages on YouTube for key international events in 2024 and beyond.

Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS, said, “Brand safety is a top priority for marketers as we approach upcoming marquee global media events. We are empowering marketers with enhanced products like our expanded Total Media Quality for YouTube which now offers IAS’s misinformation reporting. We’re excited to offer the ability to detect misinformation with our best-in-class measurement solution.” 

In March, IAS announced earning MRC accreditation for integrated third-party calculation and reporting of YouTube video viewability. In December 2023, IAS announced the availability of its Total Media Quality (TMQ) brand safety and suitability measurement across YouTube Shorts, offering advertisers expanded coverage for advanced brand safety and suitability measurement. 

Singapore – Integral Ad Science (IAS), a global media measurement and optimization platform, has appointed Marc Grabowski as chief operating officer (COO) and Srishti Gupta as chief product officer (CPO).

As COO, Grabowski will focus on customer success, business strategy, and company commercial operations as he oversees IAS’ global commercial organisation. Grabowski was formerly the global vice president of Oracle Advertising.

Meanwhile, Gupta will lead the product strategy and development while supervising the company’s go-to-market initiatives. Previously, she worked as the chief product officer at Rokt.

Lisa Utzschneider, chief executive officer of IAS,  commented, “We are delighted to welcome Marc and Srishti to IAS as they will enhance our senior leadership team, strengthen our customer-first approach, and advance our product development to meet the future needs of our customers and partners.”

“Marc and Srishti have a shared focus on innovation and agility which is essential in our fast-paced and dynamic industry. We look forward to their contributions as we continue to enable our customers to maximise performance while safeguarding and scaling their digital media investments,” Utzschneider added.

“IAS’s focus on data integrity and its trusted AI-backed technology, along with the company’s capabilities in social media, the open web, Connected TV (CTV), and other emerging channels makes this an exciting opportunity. I’m excited to offer my experience in strategy and execution to IAS’s strong bench of talent to drive superior results for our customers and partners,” Grabowski said.

“As marketers look to maximise return on their digital ad investments across channels, IAS has continued to innovate with high velocity and flexibility. I look forward to building on this strong foundation, driving customer value through industry-leading products, and furthering IAS’s mission of delivering trust and transparency in digital media quality,” Gupta said.

Both appointments are effective on 16 September.

Singapore – Integral Ad Science (IAS) has announced the expansion of its ‘Quality Attention’ measurement product, adding support for mobile in-app environments. ‘Quality Attention’ is the first measurement product to unify media quality and eye tracking with machine learning to deliver proven results. 

This enhancement to ‘Quality Attention’ continues IAS’s commitment to providing advertisers with expanded coverage across additional channels and formats. In addition to expanded environment support, the ‘Quality Attention’ model has improved accuracy of the correlation between attention scores and outcomes. 

IAS’s attention model is designed to predict if an impression is more likely to lead to a business result including awareness, consideration, and conversion. 

Said attention model provides advertisers with measurement across mobile in-app environments and new metrics including the number of ads that paused, resumed, skipped and started a video ad, in addition to volume change and sub-metrics of volume change. Moreover, it will give advertisers a singular view of campaigns’ attention performance, trained based on a pool of data consisting of billions of impressions and millions of conversion events. 

‘Quality Attention’ also allows advertisers to capture higher attention to drive campaign performance and unlock proven results. Quality Attention uses advanced machine learning technology, actionable data from Lumen Research’s eye-tracking technology, and a variety of signals obtained as part of IAS’s core technology, including viewability, ad situation, and user interaction, and weighs them into a single attention score. 

Khurrum Malik, chief marketing officer of Integral Ad Science, said, “It’s essential for attention measurement to drive outcomes and campaign performance for advertisers. The latest enhancements to our purpose-built Quality Attention offering are expected to provide advertisers with more granular signals and expanded coverage across the channels and formats that are most important to them.” 

Meanwhile, Mike Follett, CEO at Lumen Research, commented, “The latest enhancements to IAS’s Quality Attention offering is a step forward in creating a more accurate picture of attention for advertisers. We were excited to combine our cutting-edge eye-tracking data with IAS’s attention model and now advertisers have access to even more granular information across the in-app environment.” 

Singapore – Integral Ad Science (IAS) has announced new partnerships with social media platforms Pinterest and Reddit to provide advertisers for these platforms with AI-driven brand safety measurement tools via IAS’s AI-driven Total Media Quality (TMQ) Brand Safety and Suitability product.

As part of Total Media Quality (TMQ) for Pinterest, advertisers get access to Viewability, Invalid Traffic (IVT), and Brand Safety Measurement within IAS Signal, the unified reporting platform that delivers the data and insights advertisers need to easily manage their digital campaigns. This enhancement expands on IAS’s partnership with Pinterest, which offered Viewability and Invalid Traffic (IVT) Measurement across display and video inventory in 2023. 

Meanwhile, for Reddit–the partnership will give advertisers an additional layer of trusted, third-party transparency in their investment on Reddit as they reach and engage with the platform’s 100,000+ interest-based, intent-driven communities. Global Reddit advertisers will have access to IAS’s reliable, independent Brand Safety and Suitability, Viewability, and Invalid Traffic (IVT) measurement to safeguard and scale their campaigns across Reddit. 

Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS, said, “Reddit continues to be a leader in contextually relevant conversations, with a breadth of opportunities for advertisers to reach its highly engaged communities. Our partnership will give Reddit customers additional confidence that their ads are appearing alongside content that aligns with their brand values via reliable and accurate data, so they can focus on driving business growth within Reddit’s uniquely valuable archive of human experience.”

She added, “Marketers are looking for brand safe destinations to reach highly engaged audiences across demographics as they look to safeguard and scale their brands. The launch of our AI-driven Total Media Quality for Pinterest reaffirms our commitment to giving advertisers the confidence that their spend is being allocated towards appropriate environments.” 

Bill Watkins, chief revenue officer of Pinterest, said, “In partnership with IAS, we are excited to offer brand safety to our customers and give them greater confidence in their advertising strategies through best-in-class technology. Pinterest is committed to providing a shoppable, positive platform for consumers, and our work with IAS will ensure advertisers can engage with the right audiences as they move from inspiration, to consideration, to conversion.” 

Meanwhile, Jim Squires, EVP of business marketing and growth at Reddit, commented, “Third-party validation underscores our commitment to equipping Reddit advertisers with the tools they need to confidently grow on our platform. With IAS, we’re giving our clients a clear understanding of where their ads are appearing and how they’re delivering on Reddit, increasing confidence and allowing them to focus on what matters: developing their campaign strategy and creative.”