Open Source Initiative To Bring Greater Transparency and Interoperability for Mobile Viewability Measurement 

New York, NY – December 8, 2016 – Integral Ad Science (IAS), the technology and data company that empowers the advertising industry to effectively influence consumers everywhere, today announced that it will open source its mobile verification software development kit (SDK) for media quality measurement. With this SDK, publishers will be able to measure their mobile inventory without the need to integrate multiple SDKs from various partners. With industry support from Ansible, Conversant, Google, InMobi, Lenovo, Médiamétrie, the Media Rating Council, MoPub, OpenX, The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD), and other industry leaders, IAS is focused on moving the industry forward and driving greater transparency for publishers, brands, and agencies.

“The marketing and advertising industries have faced challenges around fragmentation of not only media and devices, but also a lack of standards around infrastructure. Following leaders like Google and Microsoft, we are embracing an open source approach and contributing over a year of development efforts back to the industry to make it more efficient for publishers and developers to implement, integrate, and ship code,” says Scott Knoll, former CEO, IAS. “With support from across the industry, we are already seeing our community acknowledge the importance of engaging in cross collaboration to ensure all members of the digital ecosystem have a voice in solving problems related to viewability in mobile environments. This approach cuts years off for advertisers to be able to measure viewability on 100 percent of their mobile campaigns, compared to the small percent they are currently able to measure.”

An open source SDK will mitigate numerous challenges currently faced by the industry with existing solutions. For publishers, the current installation process requires significant development work, adding latency and risk of updates affecting other pieces of the application. With an open source SDK, publishers will have more control over the code implemented in their applications and gain the ability to detect technical issues more rapidly. App developers are currently required to integrate multiple SDKs from a variety of partners to receive measurement across inventory. With an open source SDK, developers can cut down on development time and improve ad load time, making the entire process easier to manage and more mobile inventory able to be measured.

Initiating the open source SDK with a select number of partners in Q4 2016, IAS is working closely with industry leaders and associations to ensure widespread adoption, feedback, and commitment. The aim will be to introduce this to market in early 2017.

Industry Support

“The MRC’s Mobile Viewable Impression Measurement Guidelines recognized the challenges associated with the use of SDKs for mobile viewability measurement, and encouraged the development of an open source standard SDK by the industry for this purpose,” said George W. Ivie, Executive Director and CEO of the Media Rating Council.  “We commend Integral Ad Science for its efforts to make such an SDK available to all, and we look forward to working with all parties in assessing the feasibility of this and other approaches to foster consistency of measurement.”

“Viewability measurement is a key focus for MoPub in 2017. By open sourcing their SDK, IAS is providing an effective solution to address viewability measurement and transparency for in-app inventory,” says Janae McDonough, VP, MoPub at Twitter. “MoPub is excited to partner with IAS to bring viewability measurement at scale to our buyers.”

“Relying on proprietary SDKs for mobile viewability will fail to solve for programmatic scale.  IAS has made a bold, strategic move which enables the industry to solve in-app viewability at massive scale immediately — it really is a gift to programmatic buyers.” says Jeff Coon, VP of Global Alliances at InMobi. “InMobi is thrilled to support this open source coalition and is pleased to be among the very first to offer this capability to our clients.”

“In today’s ever-changing digital landscape, our clients need more flexible and sophisticated methods to assess their mobile advertising efforts,” says Mark Power, Managing Director, USA, at Ansible, the full service mobile agency of IPG Mediabrands. “We’re excited to support this open source SDK, and commend IAS for providing the industry with a truly scalable solution for mobile verification.”

“Open sourcing this initiative will result in a stronger, more secure approach to measure in-app viewability, and give advertisers more flexibility when assessing their mobile inventory,” says Gary Milner, Director, Global Digital Marketing, Lenovo. “We’re proud to join IAS and other industry leaders to bring this initiative to market.”

“Open source standards for mobile viewability foster an easier integration process between publishers and measurement partners, while enabling buyers access to high quality, viewable mobile inventory,” says David Danziger, VP of Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk. “We’re proud to join IAS and other industry leaders in driving forward an initiative that creates more efficiency and more transparency across the entire ecosystem.”

“Our commitment to providing quality inventory and the best viewability standards is why we joined Integral Ad Science in their pursuit of making an open source SDK the industry standard,” says John Murphy, Vice President, Marketplace Quality at OpenX. “We’re excited to work with their team and other industry influencers to ensure innovation and growth continues to happen in the mobile viewability space.”

“The development and widespread support of an open source SDK is a major win for our industry,” says Chad Peplinski, SVP of Media Acquisitions and Operations at Conversant. “Advertisers can receive the measurement they require. Publishers can be more nimble and avoid heavy technical burdens.  Most importantly, consumers benefit from a better user experience that focuses on content and functionality. We are proud to partner with Integral Ad Science and other industry leaders to foster innovation and growth in this space.”

“Médiamétrie fully supports Integral Ad Science’s launch of an open source SDK. We believe that such an initiative will push forward and support France’s Online Video GRP initiative and will drive the development of new quality standards in digital campaign measurement,” says Benoît Cassaigne, Senior Vice President Audience Measurement, Médiamétrie.

About Integral Ad Science

Integral Ad Science (IAS) is a global technology and data company that builds verification, optimization, and analytics solutions to empower the advertising industry to effectively influence consumers everywhere, on every device. We solve the most pressing problems for brands, agencies, publishers, and technology companies by verifying that every impression has the opportunity to be effective, optimizing towards opportunities to consistently improve results, and analyzing digital’s impact on consumer actions. Built on data science and engineering, IAS is headquartered in New York with global operations in ten countries. Our growth and innovation have been recognized in Inc. 500, Crain’s Fast 50, Forbes America’s Most Promising Companies, and I-COM’s Smart Data Marketing Technology Company. Learn more at integralads.com.

Contact:
Veronica Herico
415-820-4168