Brightcove & Moat Team Up to Deliver Video Ad Viewability

For premium video publishers and broadcasters who depend on video advertising, Brightcove’s partnerships with leading independent third-party measurement providers, like Nielsen and comScore, are critical. Today, we are pleased to announce our new collaboration with Moat, which gives publishers a simple way to measure and report on the viewability of ads played back by the Brightcove Player.

Ad viewability is a metric that defines whether or not an ad is “in view” during playback. The Media Rating Council (MRC) defines an in-stream video ad as viewable if more than 50% of the ad’s pixels are in view for at least two consecutive seconds. The MRC’s definition is dominant, but advertisers and agencies (e.g., WPP’s GroupM) have advocated for their own stricter definitions.

As a topic, ad viewability has gotten a lot of attention in the online video space and rightfully so. Given advertisers are making bigger and bigger bets on online video (e.g., they’re spending over $10 million on the NewFronts this year according to the IAB, up 85% from two years ago), they logically want to know that their ads are actually seen, versus simply delivered. In fact, according to Videology’s Q2 report, US advertisers’ top campaign objective was viewability.

Publishers also care deeply about being able to measure ad viewability. They strive to demonstrate that their properties can drive high rates of viewability and engagement against advertisers’ target audiences. Publishers that show advertisers high rates are often able to command higher CPMs for their inventory.

We’ve found that a big hurdle for some publishers is the operational effort required to actually measure ad viewability. Although Moat already integrates with a number of ad servers and SSPs, publishers that use Google DFP, for example, have had to add Moat’s VPAID wrapper to each individual ad tag. To alleviate the manual burden, Moat developed a plugin for the Brightcove Player, i.e., a snippet of Javascript that’s compiled with the player one time and executes during playback for “always-on” measurement. When implemented alongside Brightcove’s Google IMA integration, Moat’s plugin is able to capture and report on a host of metrics during ad playback, viewability being the most notable.

It's also worth acknowledging that VPAID, a specification intended to define and govern how interactive ads work with online video players, is now used for other purposes (e.g., auctions) that can downgrade user experience. While one common use of VPAID is to distribute code to determine viewability, Brightcove's perspective is that it's better (and more secure) to use a player plugin, allowing trusted Javascript to be included with the player and to execute during playback. Read more of Brightcove's POV here: Ads and the Brightcove Player

As we stay laser-focused on enabling publishers to drive their video businesses and recognize that independent third-party measurement is critical, we’re excited to welcome Moat to Brightcove’s ecosystem. We hope our joint customers take advantage of the new integration. To gain access to Moat’s plugin for the Brightcove Player, customers should reach out to their Moat account manager.