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The long-held adage that "all media isn’t created equal" is a foundational truth often sidelined by the prevailing algorithmic logic of programmatic advertising. Despite this truism, the industry’s relentless pursuit of efficiency has led to a commoditization of ad impressions, where the primary focus is on targeting specific audiences, often at the expense of evaluating the intrinsic quality of the media environment itself. This audience-centric approach, while seemingly logical, overlooks critical nuances that can significantly impact campaign effectiveness and advertiser ROI. Challenging this deeply ingrained paradigm, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) is set to release a pivotal paper that dissects and aims to redefine the measurement of media quality, with a particular emphasis on the rapidly growing Connected TV (CTV) landscape. A pre-release review of this document, teased during CIMM’s recent East event in New York City, reveals a comprehensive effort to move the industry beyond self-serving definitions of quality and towards an objective, industry-wide consensus.
The forthcoming CIMM paper is not merely an academic exercise; it presents a compelling argument that significant disparities in media quality are not only measurable but also demonstrably impact campaign outcomes. The report contends that the industry’s pervasive fixation on short-term performance metrics has exacerbated long-standing challenges, such as the proliferation of made-for-advertising (MFA) sites that exploit programmatic loopholes. This has led to brands inadvertently overspending on low-quality CTV inventory that is often bundled with premium placements, while ad tech vendors frequently prioritize audience data over the inherent value of the media itself.
"Quality has been a buzzword for a while in this industry, and no one’s really defined it, except, for the most part, in self-serving ways," stated Erez Levin, founder of ad tech consultancy Emet Advisory and a co-author of the paper. He elaborated that CIMM’s objective is to establish "an objective, industry-wide shared consensus and framework" to elevate discussions around media quality measurement, moving away from the current state of ambiguity. The paper’s intent is not to introduce novel measurement standards but to catalyze a holistic industry conversation, compelling agencies, tech platforms, and publishers to articulate coherent methodologies for assessing media quality.
The Imperative for Industry Consensus
The rationale behind CIMM’s initiative is underscored by the explosive growth and fragmentation of the media quality, curation, and programmatic verification ecosystem. A surge of startups, including Jounce Media, DeepSee, Sincera, Adalytics, and Gamera, are each approaching the complex challenges of media quality from distinct angles. This burgeoning field has also seen a resurgence with the public offerings of established players like DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science, alongside innovative approaches to transaction based on quality signals, such as attention measurement and deal curation.
The genesis of the CIMM paper can be traced back to the organization’s collaborative work with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) on the Attention Measurement Playbook for Marketers, released in late 2023. During the development of these attention standards, the working group repeatedly encountered a fundamental lack of consensus on how to effectively measure the quality of ad impressions. While progress is being made, CIMM aims to highlight the evolving array of tools now available to advertisers to assess and transact on media quality.
Erez Levin has been a vocal advocate for enhanced quality and attention measurement since at least 2017, when he served as a product specialist for Google Marketing Platform, engaging with both buy and sell sides. Gabriel Dorosz, the paper’s other co-author and global advertising initiative lead at the International News Media Association, brings a critical publisher-side perspective. His tenure as former head of audience strategy for The New York Times informs his conviction that the market currently under-serves premium publishers. "In the premium news publisher space, there’s a belief that the market is not serving those kinds of publishers well," Dorosz explained. "My passion is that quality publishers ought to be getting more of their fair share of ad spend, and this paper is a way to advance that."
Dispelling Enduring Myths in Ad Valuation
Dorosz further emphasized that the paper’s scope extends beyond empowering publishers to demonstrate their media’s inherent value. It also serves as a crucial resource for buyers, aiming to prevent the wasteful allocation of budgets on ineffective advertising. To achieve this, the authors confront deeply entrenched industry myths that have taken root, partly due to buyers being "oversold on the value of certainty," as Dorosz put it.
A prime example is the industry’s heavy reliance on deterministic attribution as a proxy for audience value. The presence of a deterministic identifier in a bid request is often perceived as inherently more valuable than an impression lacking such data, with factors like time of day, contextual relevance, and device type often relegated to secondary importance. However, the CIMM paper posits that probabilistic modeling, when thoughtfully applied, can offer marketers a more accurate assessment of the true value across a broader spectrum of ad impressions.
The paper advocates for the integration of probabilistic metrics, such as attention scoring and contextual relevance, to better gauge an impression’s potential to advance a brand’s stated campaign objectives. It meticulously details how these metrics can fluctuate significantly based on variables like the time of day and surrounding content. This nuanced approach is particularly relevant in the CTV space, where advertisers have become accustomed to high price points for premium inventory. Levin highlighted the anomaly of major streaming platforms maintaining similar premium pricing even for ads served during overnight hours, when audience receptivity is typically lower. He stressed the importance of advertisers understanding why their streaming campaigns might allocate substantial budget to these less optimal times and exercising caution if such spending patterns appear without clear justification.
A New Model for Media Quality
To foster a renewed emphasis on media quality throughout the industry, the CIMM paper introduces a novel framework designed to reconnect with the fundamental principles of marketing. This new model is primarily anchored in what Levin has termed "The Quality Trifecta," a concept he has championed since last year. The core tenet of this trifecta is the independent measurement of media quality, creative quality, and audience quality.
Within this framework, media quality is further dissected into two key components: "attention," which refers to the prominence and visibility of the ad placement, and "situational context," which assesses the likelihood that the surrounding media environment will foster a receptive mood in the viewer. The paper urges marketers to transcend simplistic, binary quality assessment methods, such as merely verifying the presence of an identifier in a bid request or confirming minimum viewability thresholds. Instead, it promotes the adoption of "non-binary, relative and probabilistic" measurements, such as sophisticated attention scoring systems, which evaluate media quality on a dynamic spectrum of effectiveness.
Levin argues that these more nuanced, non-binary approaches are superior for comparative analysis across different media types and are better equipped to capture the inherent variations driven by audience characteristics and contextual factors like time of day. Furthermore, the paper underscores the importance of considering both short-term performance gains and long-term brand-building opportunities. While acknowledging that smaller brands heavily reliant on immediate results should continue to prioritize short-term returns, the broader implication is that a balanced approach is essential for sustainable growth.
CTV and the Buy-Side Imperative
While the CIMM paper is intended as a guide for the entire open web, its authors clearly identify streaming media and CTV supply as the critical proving ground. This is due to CTV’s status as the highest-stakes market, characterized by elevated CPMs, intense demand competition, and expansive creative canvases. Dorosz also points to CTV’s relative freedom from the 20-plus years of third-party cookie dependency that has shaped other digital advertising channels, suggesting that players in this space are less constrained by existing industry status quos. Crucially, many established pixel-based measurement methodologies that function effectively on other platforms are ill-suited for the unique characteristics of CTV.
For instance, the paper advocates for a fundamental re-evaluation of viewability measurement in the CTV context. Given that CTV ads typically autoplay with sound and occupy the full screen, the traditional definition of viewability becomes less relevant, if not entirely moot.
Despite the ultimate goal of widespread industry adoption, the authors concur that the onus for driving change rests squarely on the buy side. Dorosz concluded, "These theories only matter if the buy side demonstrates success and drives repeatability." The success of CIMM’s ambitious initiative will hinge on its ability to persuade advertisers and their agency partners to embrace a more holistic and nuanced understanding of media quality, ultimately leading to more effective and efficient advertising investments across the digital landscape.
