ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space. In this week’s edition: IAS and Facebook extend their partnership; New European Broadcaster Alliance; xAd rebrands to GroundTruth; Factual and Adform partner; TVTY bumps up moment marketing; Smaato and DoubleClick extend collaboration; and 33Across steps up its European activities.

Integral Ad Science expands partnership with Facebook

On the back of growing concerns around transparency and viewability in the digital advertising industry, measurement and analytics provider IAS is expanding its partnership with Facebook. After bringing video and display viewability and fraud measurement to Facebook advertisers last year, marketers can now apply measurement and reporting to their campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook’s Audience Network, where fraud data is now available for video ads bought through the video view objective, effectively extending third-party measurement to inventory outside of Facebook’s owned and operated properties.

Speaking with ExchangeWire, Nick Morley, EMEA MD at Integral Ad Science, comments:
“Collaboration is critical for the global advertising industry; and it's great to see the industry challenging the current issues around transparency and measurement. To this end, Facebook has shown its commitment by expanding its partnership with us to enable further integration. We hope others in the industry will follow its lead to ensure advertisers have a holistic view of their media buys and be empowered by the knowledge that the quality of their investment is guaranteed.”

“Our industry must collaborate to move past our current challenges around transparency and measurement”, adds David Hahn, CPO at IAS. “That’s why we’re continually working to expand our partnerships with companies like Facebook to address these issues head on and provide a more complete view of their media buys to our customers.”

Advertisers will be able to measure and evaluate performance across campaigns based on the '50% in-view for one second' standard for display ads on Facebook.

ProsiebenSat1 forges European media alliance

German broadcaster ProSiebenSat1 wants to team up with European counterparts to establish a joint venture for video campaigns. As a reaction to the dominance of US players, the media groups ProSiebenSat.1, TF1, and Mediaset are forming the 'European Broadcaster Exchange' (EBX), which is to provide advertisers with access to pan-European, programmatic video campaigns. As part of the video alliance, members are supplying their video advertising inventory, which advertisers can then buy for programmatic, pan-European campaigns in premium advertising environments.

Besides expanding their reach across Europe, the participating broadcasters also hope to give programmatic advertising a push – and to support solutions against the influx of global competitors.

The Broadcaster Exchange is to be based in London, operating a sales team as well as an automated trading platform. However, at this stage, the project is still subject to the approval of the European competition authorities.

The three founding members, French TF1 Group, Italy’s Mediaset, and German ProSiebenSat1 are members of the European Media Alliance, a media network that was initiated by ProSiebenSat.1 in 2014. The three media groups initially announced their digital media cooperation in January 2017.

xAd rebrands to GroundTruth

Location marketing company xAd is going through a global rebrand. The new name, GroundTruth, is designed to reflect its evolution from a company focused on the advertising industry to a company empowering businesses through media and data.

GroundTruth, formerly as xAd, has experienced significant growth since its founding in 2009, especially in the past 12 months. The company now operates in 21 countries globally and its recent growth is helping it move beyond its current status as an advertising supplier, to one that will 'power decisions across a variety of industries and pillars, whether it's through media, small-medium sized businesses, channel partnerships, measurement or data', according to the press release.

xAd rebrands to GroundTruth

Theo Theodorou, general manager EMEA, GroundTruth said to ExchangeWire: “We’re very excited to announce that xAd is reborn today as GroundTruth. The name represents a change in our vision, our mission...  and it's an investment in our future.

"Back in 2009, the xAd team set out to build a revolutionary location solution for advertisers. We've introduced the world to a number of firsts, such as our Blueprints technology and cost-per-visit product, and worked with third-party validation companies to ensure that our data is the most accurate on the market. The name xAd served us well for the past eight years, but the word "ad" limits us. After building a solution that receives more than a billion physical visits a month across 21 countries around the world, 14 of those across Europe, it became clear to us that a change was needed, and that's how we got to GroundTruth.

"GroundTruth is a name that reflects our growing vision for what location can truly accomplish and the scale at which we can accomplish it. We're moving beyond a company that only serves the media industry to one that will use its data to empower many more industries. We can help businesses grow more strategically and make smarter business decisions.”

Factual and Adform partnership

A new partnership between Adform and Factual is to provide advertisers with new avenues of access to location data across Europe. The collaboration gives advertisers access to Factual’s standard audience taxonomy and custom segments via Adform’s data-management platform.

Factual and Adform are also exploring a demand-side platform integration that would allow seamless access for buyers to build and deploy location audience segments through Factual’s Geopulse products.

“Robust and accurate location data has rapidly become an essential part of highly effective campaigns. To this end, we’re excited to partner with Factual to make their location data easily accessible through our platform”, says Jurjen De Wal, product director mobile solutions, Adform. “Combining high-quality location data with an extensive reach across Europe will give our buyers the tools to build stronger audience insights and targeting capabilities to better drive their digital marketing efforts.”

At the same time, the new partnership expands Factual’s footprint across Europe, after taking a first step towards expanding its activities earlier this year when Factual appointed a new MD for Europe.

TVTY extends moment marketing

TVTY wants to unify the implementation of moment-centred advertising strategies in a single platform. With the extension of its moment marketing capabilities, TVTY enables advertisers to place videos across the open web, syncing to specific moments when consumer interest is highest. Besides triggers, such as their own ads or relevant TV shows, the weather, trending topics etc. can be used as launch points for digital video campaigns.

Eliott Reilhac, CEO, TVTY

“TV shows attract specific audiences brands want to target; but increasingly people reach for other devices during breaks or whilst watching programmes. We’re helping brands ensure they can reach their audience at the right moments, no matter which screen they’re using”, explains Eliott Reilhac, CEO, TVTY. “Online video is one of the most powerful and emotive forms of advertising and can now be served at the exact moment that matters to help brands create lasting connections with consumers.”

The TV and video service by TVTY is offered on a cost-per-view (CPV) pricing model, with only 100%-completed videos being charged. The video ads come with a guaranteed minimum viewability rate of 70%. To ensure the media bought on these campaigns, TVTY will utilise its network of established partners to provide customers maximum exposure (above 87% of customers) in premium, brand-safe environments.

Smaato and DoubleClick extend exchange bidding partnership

After collaboration in a prolonged beta-phase, real-time mobile advertising platform Smaato and Google’s Doubleclick are now expanding their partnership. Integrating Smaato's offering with DoubleClick’s exchange bidding program, DoubleClick publishers, thus, have access to Smaato's mobile demand.

“After an extremely successful Exchange Bidding partnership in closed beta, we are excited to continue working with Google DoubleClick to extend Smaato’s premium mobile demand to publishers worldwide”, explains Ragnar Kruse, CEO and co-founder of Smaato. “Publishers, and particularly apps, want to expand their global reach to fast-growing markets like Asia-Pacific; and Smaato is happy to partner with Google to fulfill that massive opportunity.”

As part of the partnership with Google on the product's advisory board, Smaato was DoubleClick’s mobile-only exchange beta partner and went through a closed test phase with a small group of publishers. Now DoubleClick publishers worldwide can receive bids from Smaato’s network, to provide additional competition in real time – particularly for in-app traffic.

33Across invests in Europe

The ad tech platform 33Across is marking the increase of their European activities with the introduction of a new role. As part of its expansion, former vice president of publisher and media solutions Yuri Burka is taking on the role of European managing director.

Burka’s responsibility will be to enable European publishers and advertisers to grow their businesses through 33Across’ publisher monetisation platform.

The European appointment is part of 33Across’ global expansion, driven by new and existing publishers, and the general rise of mobile programmatic advertising. “Our growth reflects the significant changes underway in the industry as publishers are demanding greater transparency, quality, and even stronger returns from their technology partners. Without trusted high-quality inventory that performs well on mobile, the entire ecosystem is at risk”, said Eric Wheeler, CEO, 33Across. “Our platform’s ability to deliver on those publisher requirements for advertisers has resulted in triple-digit growth that shows no signs of slowing.”