The long-held adage in advertising, "all media isn’t created equal," is being revisited with renewed urgency, particularly within the burgeoning realm of programmatic advertising and Connected TV (CTV) inventory. While the industry has largely gravitated towards a theory that standardizes ad formats and creative based on audience targeting, a forthcoming paper from the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) is poised to challenge this prevailing wisdom. Teased during CIMM’s East event in New York City on Tuesday, the paper, reviewed in a pre-release copy by AdExchanger, argues that programmatic ad tech often overlooks critical nuances of media quality and content, leading to inefficiencies and perpetuating industry challenges.
The CIMM paper not only aims to demonstrate that differences in media quality are measurable but also contends that the industry’s persistent focus on short-term outcomes has hampered progress. This fixation, the paper suggests, has inadvertently fueled the proliferation of "made-for-advertising" (MFA) sites that exploit the programmatic ecosystem, led to brands overspending on less effective CTV ads interspersed with premium placements, and encouraged ad tech vendors to prioritize audience value over the intrinsic quality of the media itself.
Erez Levin, founder of ad tech consultancy Emet Advisory and a co-author of the paper, articulated the need for a more defined approach. "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," Levin stated. CIMM’s initiative, therefore, seeks to establish "an objective, industry-wide shared consensus and framework" to move discussions around media quality measurement beyond their current "limbo." The goal is not to introduce new measurement standards per se, but to foster a comprehensive industry dialogue that compels agencies, tech platforms, and publishers to articulate a coherent methodology for assessing media quality.
The Exploding Ecosystem and the Need for Consensus
The impetus for CIMM’s paper is underscored by the dramatic growth and fragmentation of the media quality, curation, and programmatic verification landscape. A wave of startups, including Jounce Media, DeepSee, Sincera, Adalytics, and Gamera, are each tackling similar challenges from distinct angles. This surge in innovation is mirrored by the re-emergence of established players like DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science, breathing new life into the dormant category of independent verification. Furthermore, recent trends in attention measurement and deal curation have introduced novel mechanisms for transacting based on quality signals, adding layers of complexity to an already intricate ecosystem.
The genesis of the CIMM paper can be traced back to the coalition’s collaboration 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 regarding the measurement of ad impression quality. This recurring challenge highlighted a critical gap in the industry’s ability to effectively evaluate and value media.
Despite these ongoing challenges, significant progress is being made. The CIMM paper aims to elevate awareness of the evolving toolkit available to advertisers for assessing media quality. Levin, who 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, emphasized the importance of this evolution. He was joined in co-authoring the paper by Gabriel Dorosz, global advertising initiative lead at the International News Media Association and former head of audience strategy for The New York Times.
Dorosz’s perspective, shaped by his experience on the publisher side, further illuminates the paper’s objectives. "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 Myths and Reimagining Value
Beyond advocating for publishers’ need to demonstrate media quality, Dorosz stressed that the paper also aims to equip buyers with the knowledge to avoid squandering resources on purportedly effective, yet ultimately inefficient, ad placements. The authors endeavor to dismantle entrenched myths that have emerged from buyers being "oversold on the value of certainty," according to Dorosz.
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 often renders that inventory inherently more valuable than one lacking such an identifier. In this paradigm, factors like time of day, contextual data, and device type are frequently relegated to secondary importance compared to the perceived certainty provided by deterministic IDs.
However, the CIMM paper posits that probabilistic modeling, rather than solely deterministic data, offers marketers a more accurate assessment of the true value across a broad spectrum of ad impressions. The paper provides actionable guidance on incorporating probabilistic metrics such as attention scoring and contextual relevance to gauge an impression’s likelihood of advancing a brand’s stated campaign objectives. It meticulously details how these metrics can fluctuate significantly based on temporal and contextual factors.
This argument extends to the premium pricing often associated with CTV inventory. Levin pointed out that major streaming platforms maintain high price tags even for ads served during overnight hours, when audience receptivity is typically diminished. This suggests that advertisers should critically examine why their streaming campaigns might allocate substantial budget to overnight slots and question such allocations if they lack a clear strategic rationale.
A New Quality Model: The Quality Trifecta
To galvanize the industry into re-prioritizing media quality, the CIMM paper introduces a novel model designed to reconnect with the foundational principles of marketing. This new framework is anchored by "The Quality Trifecta," a concept championed by Levin since last year, which advocates for the independent measurement of media quality, creative quality, and audience quality.
Within this model, media quality is further bifurcated into two key components: "attention," which refers to the prominence and visibility of an ad placement, and "situational context," which assesses the likelihood that the surrounding media environment fosters a receptive mood in the viewer.
The paper strongly advises marketers to transcend binary quality measurement methods – such as the mere presence of an ID in a bid request or meeting a minimum viewability threshold. Instead, it champions the adoption of "non-binary, relative and probabilistic" measurements, exemplified by attention scoring, which evaluate media quality on a spectrum of effectiveness. Levin highlighted that these non-binary approaches facilitate more accurate comparisons across diverse media types and are better equipped to capture the inherent variations influenced by audience demographics, time of day, and other contextual elements.
Furthermore, the paper underscores the importance of considering both short-term performance metrics and long-term brand-building opportunities. While acknowledging that smaller brands heavily reliant on immediate returns should continue to prioritize short-term outcomes, the overarching message encourages a more balanced perspective on campaign objectives.
CTV as the Proving Ground and the Buy-Side Imperative
While the CIMM paper offers guidance applicable to the entire open web, the authors identify streaming media and CTV supply as the critical proving ground. This is due to CTV’s high-stakes environment, characterized by elevated CPMs, intense demand, and expansive creative canvases, making it the most impactful market for testing and validating new quality paradigms.
Dorosz added that CTV’s relative freedom from the two-decade-long dependency on third-party cookies, coupled with the fact that many traditional pixel-based measurement approaches are ill-suited to the platform, creates a unique opportunity for innovation. For instance, the paper challenges conventional viewability measurement for CTV. Given that CTV ads typically autoplay with sound and occupy the full screen, the traditional definition of viewability becomes less relevant, necessitating a reevaluation of how effectiveness is assessed.
Ultimately, while industry-wide adoption remains the ultimate objective, the 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." The success of this initiative hinges on advertisers actively embracing these new frameworks and proving their efficacy in driving tangible results, thereby compelling the broader industry to recalibrate its approach to media valuation.
