YouTube finally gets measurement accreditation with DoubleVerify

DoubleVerify has become the first measurement firm to win Media Rating Council accreditation to measure video viewability across YouTube using Google’s Ads Data Hub “clean room,” the company and MRC announced today.

The accreditation delivers on something advertisers have sought for years—MRC accredited third-party audience measurement across one of the biggest pools of digital video ad inventory. YouTube accounted for $28 billion in global ad spend last year, according to Statista data reported by DoubleVerify.

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More than five years ago, Procter & Gamble Co. Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard called on digital media players to provide third-party, MRC-accredited audience measurement. While today there are plenty of third-party players that are MRC-accredited, it’s less common to have MRC-accredited third-party measurement that can operate within the so-called “walled gardens,” including YouTube.

The Ads Data Hub is a door through one of those walls around the Google garden. It provides aggregated, anonymized access to YouTube user data that can be matched with marketers’ first-party data. Among other things, it lets marketers upload their first-party data to join it with Google ad campaign data for custom analysis based on targeted audience segments, while maintaining Google’s standards for user privacy.

Google received MRC accreditation for its own reporting via the ADH last year, a necessary step before a third party could apply for accreditation using the tool, said Marissa McArdle, senior VP of product management at DoubleVerify.

“We’re not currently tracking individuals or audiences on YouTube,” McArdle said. “But what this is doing is allowing us to report out impressions and viewability for the media.”

DoubleVerify's MRC accreditation covers desktop and mobile (both web and app) across YouTube platforms that include Google Ads, DV360 and YouTube Reserve. Covered ad formats include skippable in-stream, non-skippable in-stream, standard in-stream, instream select and bumper ads.

While DoubleVerify is first to get the accreditation, Oracle's Moat has an application in for a similar integration with the Google Ads Data Hub, according to a spokesman for the MRC.

DoubleVerify, which got its first MRC digital viewability accreditation in 2013, has been among the most successful at getting and maintaining accreditations for key digital measurements. That includes 2020 accreditation for impression and viewability measurement and reporting for display and video ads on Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Instagram. The company last year won accreditation across a variety of connected TV measures, including video ad impressions, anti-fraud (sophisticated invalid traffic), fully on screen and ad completion measures. And earlier this month, DoubleVerify got accreditation across its programmatic ad targeting services.

Accreditation “helps us win business, but it also ensures that we have transparency and integrity behind all of our products,” said Nicole Priesmeyer, VP of product operations at DoubleVerify.

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“We often see accreditation as a pretty key question in the evaluation process when choosing a measurement provider,” McArdle said.

“Marketers place high importance on independent third-party reporting concerning their ad investments,” said George W. Ivie, CEO of the MRC, in a statement. He congratulated DV on earning accreditation “for serving a key marketplace need.”

DoubleVerify went public last year, and its business has been growing nicely, with its revenue up 36% to $333 million last year, led by social-media and CTV measurement revenue and 176 new client wins, the company reported. Even so, its stock has scuffled, as have those of most other media measurement players, down almost 50% from its high reached last June.