AdExchanger News Round Up, Featuring Zefr | Nov 2024

Here’s today’s AdEx​chang​er​.com news round-up…

IAS’s Two Cents Integral Ad Science is raising rates on various products by one to three cents per CPM, Adweek reports. The new prices go into effect on November 1. IAS is juggling a difficult set of pins right now.  For one, it’s up for sale, according to a Bloomberg report last week. Then there’s the fact publishers are ticked that verification providers have waded into ad serving, targeting and contextual analytics, which they scrape from websites. And advertisers are more than a little irritated by recent Adalytics reports documenting apparent brand safety tech failures. But IAS and DV have tailwinds, too, though. Moat, which was shut down by Oracle last month, had some major brand clients, which are now up for grabs. And IAS and DV could also have great strategic appeal for major media platforms, like big retailers or TV manufacturers. IAS’s shares are up 11.8% since the news broke that it’s weighing a sale. The Unverifiers For all the focus on the best-known brand safety and verification companies – IAS, DV, Moat (RIP) and White Ops (now HUMAN) – there is a multitudinous set of contenders. Zefr is one such brand safety challenger, which has long focused on walled garden integrations. IAS and DV are now both also headed down that road. But Zefr is still clinching partnerships, including with YouTube and, just this week, with Snap. And then there’s GeoEdge, a cyber security and ad verification company that just snagged a partnership with Yahoo DSP to monitor its campaigns, akin to The Trade Desk’s longstanding partnership with HUMAN. Also this week, MikMak, a commerce ad tech and analytics company, inked a deal with TrackStreet, which monitors product placements and brand safety for ecommerce advertisers. But there’s more. Moving over to podcast and streaming audio advertising, Barometer, an ad analytics and brand safety startup primarily for audio campaigns, announced on Thursday that it’s going to help audio ad seller Acast build brand-safe podcast marketplaces.