Yahoo Opens Up To Third-Party Measurement For Fraud, Viewability

Yahoo said, this week, that it is now offering brands independent verification on display and video advertising for both viewability and fraud measurement. In addition to Yahoo’s own MRC-accredited viewability tool, Prime View, advertisers can use third-party solutions such as comScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science and Moat.

“At Yahoo, we believe advertisers should have the flexibility to verify viewability and fraud levels with the tools of their choice,” Dennis Buchheim, VP of product management at Yahoo, “which is why we’re partnering with leading, independent measurement companies to give our customers the confidence they deserve when running campaigns on our inventory and across the web.”

The tools can be used to measure viewability and fraud rates for display and video ads across Yahoo’s owned and operated sites.

Asked whether Yahoo was following the IAB’s recommended viewability threshold of 70 percent of impressions for make good purposes, Buchheim said by email, “Yes. That said, we are flexible to the clients’ needs; we have and continue to accommodate 100 percent viewable impression campaigns using Prime View or third-party metrics, upon client request.”

Buchheim also said that if there is a discrepancy between Yahoo’s Prime View and a third-party tool, the third-party measurement data will be used. Update: Yahoo clarified that, for viewability guarantees, Prime View is used; at this time, Yahoo does not offer a guaranteed viewability product using third-party measurement.

The Media Rating Council’s standard for viewability measurement is that 50 percent of a display ad must be in-screen for at least one second, while for video, 50 percent of the ad must be in view for a least two seconds.