The long-held adage that "all media isn’t created equal" is being challenged in the modern programmatic advertising landscape, where a prevailing theory suggests that audience targeting alone dictates value, effectively commoditizing ad formats and creative. This notion, however, is the central point of contention for the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), whose forthcoming paper aims to dismantle this simplistic view, particularly within the burgeoning Connected TV (CTV) inventory. A pre-release review of the paper, teased at CIMM’s East event in New York City on Tuesday, reveals a comprehensive argument that not only proves the measurability of media quality but also critiques the industry’s relentless focus on short-term outcomes, which has perpetuated inefficiencies and inflated the value of subpar ad placements.
CIMM’s research highlights how the programmatic ecosystem, driven by automated bidding for ad impressions, frequently overlooks the intrinsic quality of the media itself and the content within which ads are placed. This oversight has led to a market where "made-for-advertising" sites can game the system, brands inadvertently overspend on low-quality CTV ads that are bundled with premium placements, and ad tech vendors prioritize audience data over the value derived from the media environment.
"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 articulated that CIMM’s objective in publishing this guidance is to foster an "objective, industry-wide shared consensus and framework." This framework is intended to move the industry beyond its current "limbo" regarding media quality measurement and initiate a more coherent and universally understood approach. The paper is not about introducing new measurement standards, Levin clarified, but rather about catalyzing a fundamental industry-wide conversation, compelling agencies, tech platforms, and publishers to articulate and demonstrate their methodologies for assessing media quality.
The Imperative for Industry Consensus
The current media quality, curation, and programmatic verification landscape is characterized by a significant proliferation of specialized services. A wave of startups, including Jounce Media, DeepSee, Sincera, Adalytics, and Gamera, are approaching the complex challenges of media quality from diverse angles. Furthermore, the emergence of publicly traded giants like DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science has revitalized a previously dormant sector. This surge in innovation is further amplified by recent trends in attention measurement and sophisticated deal curation, which offer novel ways to transact based on verifiable quality signals.
The genesis of the CIMM paper can be traced back to the organization’s collaboration with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) on the "Attention Measurement Playbook for Marketers," released late last year. During the development of these attention standards, the working group repeatedly encountered a significant impediment: the absence of a unified understanding and consensus on how to accurately measure the quality of ad impressions. This foundational gap underscored the urgent need for a more standardized and universally accepted approach to quality assessment.
While acknowledging the progress being made, CIMM aims to elevate awareness of the sophisticated tools now available to advertisers for evaluating media quality. Erez Levin has been a vocal advocate for enhanced quality and attention measurement since at least 2017, a period during which he served as a product specialist for Google Marketing Platform, engaging with both the buy and sell sides of the advertising equation. The paper’s other co-author, Gabriel Dorosz, brings a wealth of experience from the publisher side, currently serving as the global advertising initiative lead at the International News Media Association and formerly as head of audience strategy for The New York Times.
Dorosz’s motivation for co-authoring the paper stems from his deep-seated belief that the current market is not adequately serving premium news publishers. "In the premium news publisher space, there’s a belief that the market is not serving those kinds of publishers well," he 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 Entrenched Myths in Ad Valuation
Beyond advocating for publishers, Dorosz emphasized that the CIMM paper is equally dedicated to equipping buyers with the knowledge to prevent the wasteful expenditure of advertising budgets on less effective placements. The authors actively seek to debunk persistent myths that have taken root, largely due to what Dorosz describes as buyers being "oversold on the value of certainty."
A prime example of this entrenched thinking is the industry’s heavy reliance on deterministic attribution as a proxy for audience value. In the current programmatic paradigm, a bid request containing a deterministic identifier is often automatically deemed more valuable than one lacking such data. Consequently, factors such as time of day, contextual relevance, and device type are frequently relegated to secondary importance, overshadowed by the perceived certainty of deterministic IDs.
However, the CIMM paper presents a compelling counter-argument: probabilistic modeling offers a more accurate and comprehensive view of the true value of a wide spectrum of ad impressions. The paper provides actionable guidance for marketers to incorporate probabilistic metrics, such as attention scoring and contextual relevance, to better assess an impression’s potential to advance stated campaign objectives. It meticulously details how these metrics can fluctuate significantly based on contextual factors, including the time of day.
This principle is particularly relevant in the context of Connected TV (CTV). Despite the premium price tags associated with CTV inventory, the CIMM paper points out that major streaming platforms often command these high CPMs even for ads served during off-peak hours, when audience receptivity is typically lower. Levin suggests that advertisers should critically question campaigns that allocate substantial budget overnight, suspecting potential inefficiencies if such spending patterns are not explicitly justified.
A Reimagined Framework for Media Quality
To effectively steer the industry back toward prioritizing media quality, the CIMM paper introduces a novel framework designed to reconnect with the foundational principles of marketing. This new model is anchored in "The Quality Trifecta," a concept championed by Levin since the previous year. The core tenet of this trifecta is the independent measurement of three critical components: media quality, creative quality, and audience quality.
Within this framework, media quality is further delineated into two key sub-factors: "attention," which pertains to the prominence and visibility of the ad placement, and "situational context," which considers the likelihood that the surrounding media environment fosters a receptive mood in the viewer.
The paper advocates for a departure from binary quality assessment methods, such as simply checking for the presence of an ID in a bid request or verifying minimum viewability standards. Instead, CIMM urges marketers to adopt "non-binary, relative, and probabilistic" measurement approaches. Metrics like attention scoring, which evaluate media quality on a spectrum of effectiveness, are presented as superior alternatives. Levin contends that these nuanced, probabilistic approaches are not only more adept at capturing the variations inherent in different audiences and contextual factors like time of day but also facilitate more meaningful comparisons across diverse media types.
Furthermore, the paper underscores the importance of balancing short-term performance objectives with long-term brand-building opportunities. While acknowledging that brands heavily reliant on immediate returns, particularly smaller ones, should maintain a focus on short-term outcomes, the broader industry is encouraged to adopt a more holistic view of advertising’s impact.
The Strategic Focus on CTV and Buy-Side Leadership
While CIMM intends the paper to serve as a guide for the entire open web, the authors specifically highlight streaming media and CTV supply as the crucial proving ground for these new quality considerations. This strategic focus is driven by CTV’s status as a high-stakes market characterized by substantial CPMs, intense demand competition, and expansive creative canvases.
Dorosz adds that CTV’s relative nascency, coupled with its freedom from the entrenched reliance on 20-plus years of third-party cookie dependency, makes it fertile ground for innovation. The established measurement methodologies, often pixel-based and suited to other platforms, are not always effective for CTV. For instance, the paper proposes a complete re-evaluation of viewability measurement for CTV. Given that CTV ads typically auto-play with sound and occupy the full screen, traditional viewability metrics become largely irrelevant.
Ultimately, while the overarching goal is industry-wide adoption, both CIMM authors concur that the buy side must spearhead this transformative shift. "These theories only matter," Dorosz concluded, "if the buy side demonstrates success and drives repeatability." This underscores the critical role of advertisers and agencies in actively implementing and validating these new approaches to media quality measurement, thereby driving broader market acceptance and evolution. The implications of this research extend to a potential recalibration of ad spend, a more efficient allocation of marketing budgets, and a more transparent and effective digital advertising ecosystem for all stakeholders involved.
