Integral Ad Science, a global media measurement and optimisation platform, recently released the 19th edition of its Media Quality Report (MQR). The report noted that Marketers are focused on safeguarding their brands from growing threats including AI-generated deepfakes and misinformation. Consumers increasingly hold advertisers accountable for ad placements around risky content, which can lead to lower levels of brand favourability and trust. In addition, with the shift to video-first environments, industry experts see social media and digital video as the top two media types to face serious challenges in 2024, and also the two that are most ripe for innovation.
Medianews4u.com caught up with Integral Ad Science (IAS) country manager India Saurabh Khattar to find out more on the company.
Q. How would you describe the progress that IAS has made in India since launching?
Our operations in India continue to grow Year-on-Year (Y-o-Y). Since starting our India operations in 2021, IAS has two offices in the country i.e. our sales office based in Gurugram and our Centre of Excellence (CoE) based out of Pune. Our CoE leads our product innovation and business operations locally. India continues to grow as a strong advertising market.
Digitalisation has certainly accelerated ad spending in the region, making it a mobile-first market. India was home to 462.0 million social media users in January 2024, equating to 32.2 percent of the total population; the medium is rife with opportunities for marketers. IAS helps digital marketers safeguard brand reputation and maximise their digital ad investments, and in India we are working with leading global and local brands, agencies, and publishers to drive superior results.
Q. Could you talk about the tools that IAS offers like the Total Visibility product that benefits advertisers?
IAS’s Total Visibility enables advertisers to get a singular view of their programmatic campaigns’ performance that includes media quality, media cost, supply path, and now, performance metrics—all in one place. Earlier this year, we also announced the general availability of our Quality Attention™ measurement product – the first to unify media quality and eye tracking with machine learning.
The new offering provides transparent metrics to help global advertisers increase return on investment, drive brand consideration, and boost conversions. With Quality Attention, advertisers can capture higher attention to drive campaign performance and unlock proven results. Also, IAS’s Brand Safety and Suitability measurement is the most effective way for advertisers to safeguard and scale their brand on social media during a major election year.
Powered by AI-driven Multimedia Technology, our solutions use frame-by-frame video analysis and speech-to-text conversion to analyse thousands of signals per video and identify misinformation with accuracy. IAS’s misinformation measurement stands out as the industry’s most scientific and scalable solution. Utilising reliable and secure AI, our advanced misinformation detection surpasses human-only reviews by identifying emerging threats. It determines which sites are strongly correlated with other well-known sources of misinformation.
Q. How does IAS help brands put ads in the right context?
Contextual targeting gives marketers the power to reach their unique brand goals before a programmatic bid is placed. It uses curated segments that are available programmatically for marketers to choose from based on their brand’s needs. IAS helps brands place ads in the right context through our Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology. IAS’s NLP-based true sentiment and emotion tech correctly understands the article, recognizing that it’s a positive article evoking feelings of happiness and hope.
Only IAS can identify the true sentiment and emotion of a page. In addition to understanding sentiment, a key differentiator of IAS technology is the ability to extract the specific emotions the author intended to convey when reading the content. IAS ensures that advertisements align with brand values and appear in suitable environments by evaluating the context and quality of potential ad placements. By scanning page content to display ads within suitable environments, brands can increase recognition, personalisation, engagement, and favorability towards their messaging.
Q. Another issue is sometimes a digital ad is seen too frequently which creates viewer annoyance. How can a company avoid this?
Overexposure to digital ads can indeed lead to viewer annoyance, ad fatigue, and ultimately decreased campaign effectiveness. Companies can adopt several strategies to prevent this from happening, ensuring that their advertising remains effective without alienating their audience.
Below are a few strategies that companies can implement:
a. To maximise consumer attention, IAS recently announced the general availability of its Quality Attention measurement product – the first to unify media quality and eye tracking with machine learning. The new offering provides transparent metrics to help global advertisers increase return on investment, drive brand consideration, and boost conversions. With Quality Attention, advertisers can capture higher attention to drive campaign performance and unlock proven results.
b. Frequency Capping: Brands can reduce ad annoyance with frequency capping by limiting the number of times a single viewer is exposed to the same ad within a set period. This strategy helps prevent user fatigue and irritation, enhancing the overall user experience.
c. Monitor and Adapt Based on Performance Data: Monitor campaign analytics closely to understand the impact of ad frequency on viewer engagement. Adjust your strategies based on real-time data to optimise ad exposure and maintain audience interest.
Q. How is IAS leveraging AI to improve its offerings?
IAS has a digital advertising platform powered by AI which processes 280 B data/day. Powered by AI-driven Multimedia Technology, our solutions use frame-by-frame video analysis and speech-to-text conversion to analyse thousands of signals per video and identify misinformation with accuracy. IAS’s misinformation measurement is the industry’s most scientific and scalable solution.
Our enhanced misinformation detection leverages trusted and safe AI and goes far beyond human-only review to detect emerging threats by determining which sites have a strong correlation to other well-known sources of misinformation. Cutting-edge AI/ML-backed technology can provide unique insight into content through frame-by-frame analysis of images, audio, and text, and can even interpret semantics.
This granularity gives marketers the ability to effectively monitor the quality of their media buys, providing confidence that their ads are appearing next to content that is brand safe and suitable to run the most effective advertising campaigns. Our Quality Attention measurement product 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.
IAS’ attention model is designed to predict if an impression is more likely to lead to a business result including awareness, consideration, and conversion. We leverage large data sets to scale and optimise our models which increases quality and reach. AI is revolutionising advertising by enabling enhanced targeting, personalisation, automation, content generation, and data analysis. It empowers advertisers to optimise campaigns, deliver more relevant and engaging content, and improve overall advertising effectiveness.
Q, Do you have a point of view on The Digital Personal Data Protection Act that the Government came out with last year?
With upcoming online data and privacy policy changes coming down the pipe, privacy continues to be a priority for both consumers and media experts. The Indian government recently passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, where consent continued to be the primary legal ground for processing personal data. It has coincided with the ongoing depreciation of cookies. This shift is prompting advertisers to adopt privacy-centric and scalable targeting strategies.
Contextual-based advertising solutions are key in efficiently connecting with new-age consumers, particularly in India’s vast and evolving market. As privacy concerns grow, brands focus on advertising methods that respect consumer privacy without compromising scale or reach.
Q. What are the key themes being played out in martech in 2024?
The martech industry is constantly evolving, and 2024 promises to be an important year, especially with Google postponing the phase-out of third-party cookies from Chrome to 2025. Some of the key themes playing out in 2024 are:
a. CTV advertising will become mainstream as the shift towards streaming and CTV marketing will continue gaining momentum in 2024. This is a growing market, as more and more people are cutting the cord and watching TV online.
To understand how big CTV is in India, we need not look further than the viewing numbers and advertising prices for the recently concluded ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup and Indian Premier League 2024.
b. The rampant spread of misinformation during the election season. The most critical technological challenge we face in the advertising industry today is the rampant spread of misinformation, especially as both AI-powered and human-generated misinformation continue to rise ahead of elections worldwide in 2024.
Brand safety is essential in today’s advertising climate as consumers increasingly hold advertisers accountable for ad placements around risky content.
Q. What role is advanced adtech playing in shaping advertising strategies during the elections?
Digital media consumption is high among consumers, which increases the chance of encountering misinformation. In today’s age of misinformation, consumer perception of misleading content impacts brand favorability. Our research reveals that 73% of media experts agree or strongly agree that ad buyers and sellers must actively avoid misinformation.
Some strategies that marketers can implement to minimise these threats are:
● Focus on mobile, video ads and social media (MVS): Mobile, Video and social media all are surpassing their projected growth no’s and are formats with higher attention. And creating different creative strategies for different formats is really important.
● Measure and Protect your digital ad spends: While the impression levels go up this festive season, the fraud rate will also increase as fraudsters are notorious for following ad spends. With the festive buying season around the corner, it’ll be prudent for advertisers to work with ad verification partners such as IAS to keep their digital ad campaigns safe and suitable, viewable and fraud-free to make maximum impact and create outcomes.
Q. As we move to a cookieless world are marketers ready or is there a lot of work to be done
Impending third-party cookie deprecation heralds a new era of digital advertising where privacy takes centre stage. Marketers must proactively adapt to this paradigm shift by embracing first-party data, leveraging contextual targeting, implementing privacy-enhancing technologies, fostering transparency, and nurturing collaborative partnerships.
By prioritising privacy and accountability, advertisers can future-proof their campaigns while upholding consumer trust and regulatory compliance.
Q. While short-form video content is consumed a lot, is a certain amount of fatigue starting to enter? Or are advertisers allocating more spending towards it?
Short-form video content has certainly gained popularity in the past few years, is here to stay, and certainly is not slowing down anytime soon. Given India’s digital surge and the younger generation’s preference for short-form video content, advertisers will continue to allocate more spending to it. Influencer marketing has played a big role in the rise of short-form video marketing.
The versatility, offering brands the ability to reach previously untapped audiences and niche markets while delivering high ROI, especially as brands continue to focus on increasing reach in Tier-II+ cities will see advertisers allocate more spending towards it.
Q. Is ad fraud a growing threat and is it important for companies to allocate a certain budgetto counter it?
Ad fraud is a big challenge and another major concern for advertisers in India. According to a report by Juniper Research, $100 billion of ad spend was lost to ad fraud in 2023. This number is expected to reach $172 billion by 2028.
So yes, it’s a significant concern and marketers must use ad fraud mitigation strategies when they run their digital advertising campaigns. Multiple types and forms of ad fraud exist today and new patterns and forms of ad fraud keep on emerging.
To maximise ROAS, companies must allocate a certain budget to fight the threat of ad fraud with respect to their digital campaigns.
Q. Finally, your views on how the IPL going free on digital has opened up big opportunities for marketers?
IPL has certainly attracted more advertisers and its revenue increase indicates that. Each year, we see more and more marketers prioritising their advertisements for the IPL. By going free, Jio Cinema has attracted more viewers, giving advertisers a chance to reach more potential customers.
Some of the key advertising-related highlights of this year’s IPL are:
a. In 2024, JioCinema has roped in 18 sponsors and 250 advertisers.
b. According to latest TAM data, There has been a 40 percent search in the number of categories that advertised in IPL this year and close to 33 percent increase in advertisers.
c. A total of 32 new categories and 101 new brands were advertised in the first 48 matches of IPL 2024. Advertising on television during the first 48 matches of the Indian Premier League has surged by 15 percent compared to the same period last season. This growth is fuelled by a significant increase in both advertiser and category participation.
