The Verified Marketplace will be the exclusive place to collectively buy desktop and mobile outstream video inventory on the Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun – guaranteeing quality content and environments for advertisers with a potential audience of over 39.4M million unique users, says the group. The marketplace will offer outstream video inventory via the UnrulyX platform.
The marketplace aims to meet the increasing demands of the ad industry for high quality video ad formats on trusted, brand safe sites with the ease and precision targeting of programmatic buying. Quality will be independently verified by Integral Ad Science and MOAT. Advertisers will be able to access this scaled, premium video opportunity through a dedicated Unruly team.
Hamish Nicklin, Chief Revenue Officer, Guardian News & Media, said: “There is a clear demand from advertisers for high quality video inventory and greater media collaboration to make buying easier and more effective. The Verified Marketplace is a significant step towards giving advertisers access to some of the very best video ad formats online, and providing more certainty around brand safety and viewability. We look forward to testing this new proposition and working with the industry to deliver the best in digital advertising.”
Ben Walmsley, Digital Commercial Director, News UK, said: “With the introduction of The Verified Marketplace we have created a safe medium for advertisers who want to access verified inventory at scale. It is an encouraging development from the newsbrands that will give advertisers access to quality audiences on one single platform.”
Dora Michail, MD of Digital, The Telegraph, said: “The Verified Marketplace provides us with a new, safe and innovative way to deliver branded video content. Our influential consumers are highly sought-after audiences for the UK’s most premium brands.”
Jason Trout, Unruly’s EMEA MD, said: “This new exclusive marketplace will deliver high-quality ad formats and peace of mind to advertisers at a time when trust in the programmatic ecosystem has never been lower, solving the problem of scarcity of genuinely premium, verifiably brand safe and viewable video environments.”
Robin O’Neill, Manager Director, Digital Trading GroupM, said: “At Group M we have long believed in the many positive benefits associated with professionally produced, high quality content for our clients advertising campaigns. We also require the ability to independently verify delivery and performance of campaigns. The Verified Market place delivers both of these in allowing easy access to video inventory at scale, in a range of iconic titles and we are fully supportive of this initiative. Group M will continue to push for greater levels of collaboration from publishers in order to bring our clients quality media with the ability to transact at scale.”
According to the publishers, the collaboration comes after research increasingly shows that newsbrands deliver the most impactful digital ad campaigns – including recent research by Peter Field / IPA that proved that video ads run on trusted news titles are 43% more likely to deliver market share growth, while 55% of programmatic decision makers will put more pressure on tech partners to proactively screen for fake news according to research by BrightRoll.
Links / further reading: UnrulyX
