Comscore and IRIS.TV Introduce Contextual Targeting for Connected TV and Video Advertising

By AIT News Desk On Mar 2, 2020

IRIS.TV’s Contextual Video Marketplace now leverages Comscore’s leading brand safety and contextual segments to deliver privacy-focused, relevant, and brand-safe video advertising

Comscore, a trusted partner for planning, transacting, and evaluating media across platforms, and IRIS.TV, a video intelligence platform for broadcasters and publishers, announced that Comscore’s brand safety and contextual categorization segments are now available for activation in IRIS.TV’s Contextual Video Marketplace. This partnership represents Comscore’s continued focus on privacy-driven innovation to meet advertisers’ needs for connected TV (CTV) advertising and the next step in expanding its contextual targeting solution to CTV content.

Advertiser demand for CTV has skyrocketed with the rapid expansion of available CTV streaming services and advertising inventory, forcing advertisers to seek privacy-friendly data solutions that provide transparency and trust in their CTV advertising. With this new partnership, advertisers can better optimize their CTV and video advertising performance by utilizing the granular segmentation that Comscore’s powerful context solution delivers. Comscore’s industry-leading contextual technology helps advertisers go beyond keyword-only-based targeting for comprehensive content insights that enable accurate brand safety and contextual categorization, while preserving reach.

“With the advancements in CTV, it is especially critical that media buyers be able to trust that their brand safety and content categorization solutions provide the highest standards of accuracy,” said Rachel Gantz, General Manager, Activation Solutions, Comscore. “Relying on technology that knows the difference between apple, the fruit, and Apple, the multinational technology company, is critical. Comscore is thrilled to partner with IRIS.TV to provide advertisers with the tools to have more confidence in their CTV advertising while providing publishers with a better way to monetize the full extent of their CTV inventory.”

According to an audience buying strategy executive at a major automotive company, “the ability to access consistent and trusted brand safety and contextual targeting options across digital, mobile, and now, CTV advertising is critical to our business. We’re excited that the rigor of brand safety and contextual categorization that we have relied on for years with digital campaigns is finally going to match the advancements in CTV.”

To enable publishers to better monetize and control the packaging of their inventory, IRIS.TV will offer Comscore’s contextual data via its marketplace for both direct and private marketplace deals being executed via supply-side platforms.

“CTV continues to play an increasingly prominent role in media, and the industry is constantly looking for the next trusted third-party brand-safe and contextual solution to apply criteria across all platforms,” said Richie Hyden, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, IRIS.TV. “With Comscore, we are excited to be leading the charge on bringing privacy-focused connected TV targeting to market and are looking forward to continuing to expand this relationship over the next year.”

Launched at Cannes Lions in 2019, IRIS.TV’s Contextual Video Marketplace brings together publishers, contextual data partners, ad servers and supply-side platforms (SSPs) into a marketplace that enables publishers’ video content to be analyzed and categorized into industry-accepted brand-safety and brand-suitable segments.

The partnership represents the latest application of the Comscore Activation solution suite, which includes a robust set of audience and contextual segments that help advertisers reach specific demographics and behavioral audiences in brand-safe, relevant contexts.

What the industry is saying:

“In order for CTV advertising to reach its full potential, the market is demanding trusted third party partners to give publishers the confidence to surface their most valuable inventory programmatically and give advertisers confidence in adoption of the new medium,” said Todd Randak, SVP of Corporate Strategy at Telaria. “Comscore and IRIS.TV’s partnership is exciting and uniquely positioned to bring this trend to fruition.”

“Accurate brand safety and contextual solutions for CTV and premium video have been the white whale of ad tech for the past few years,” said David Clutter, VP, Head of Demand at Beachfront Media. “Comscore and IRIS.TV’s new partnership is a giant step toward the kind of privacy-friendly and precise contextual targeting that premium video publishers and advertisers are demanding – and a huge step forward for the industry overall.”

“With new privacy standards coming about just as CTV is becoming mainstream, contextual targeting solutions for CTV are critical for media buyers to ensure their advertising is privacy-forward and surfacing in safe and contextually relevant environments,” said Jeremy Steinberg, Global Head of Ecosystem at MediaMath. “MediaMath has a long-standing relationship with SOURCE partner IRIS.TV which began with investment by our venture capital arm MathCapital and evolved into co-launching the industry’s first buy-side video contextual targeting solution for programmatic video. We’re excited for IRIS.TV and Comscore’s partnership to enable advertisers with consistent and trusted applications across digital, mobile, and CTV.”