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DoubleVerify Apologizes for Misreporting X Brand-Safety Rates
Source: Variety
April 15th, 2024
Summary: DoubleVerify, a leading ad verification and brand safety platform, has been accused of incorrectly displaying X's “Brand Safety Rate” for nearly five months. The error occurred from October 24, 2023 to March 14, 2024, when DoubleVerify's dashboard provided the wrong data for X to advertisers. In some cases, DoubleVerify showed Brand Safety Rates as low as 70%, whereas X's Brand Safety Rates were actually (allegedly) 99.99%. DoubleVerify CEO Mark Mark Zagorski apologized for the error and said the company's dashboard now correctly shows X's Brand Safety Rates. Elon Musk expressed gratitude to DoubleVerify for correcting the mistake. The error caused dozens of large brands to pull back advertising spending and stop campaigns on X altogether. X and Musk have aggressively pushed back against claims that the social network is unsafe for brand advertising. Last November, X sued liberal watchdog group Media Matters, alleging the group "knowingly and maliciously manufactured" research that showed neo-Nazi and white-nationalist posts on X next to ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, and Facebook.
Opinion: This doesn’t really call for ‘top story’ billing, but it’s a crazy story on so many levels, we just had to talk about it.
Our thoughts:
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Why did DoubleVerify screw up this badly for so long? What else have they screwed up? What does this tell us about their platform?
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Elon and Linda Yaccarino are probably pissed. Maybe they’ll sue?
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Ad tech companies and advertisers are probably pissed too! Will any of them sue? This has to be a nightmare for DoubleVerify from all sides (as it should be).
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The DoubleVerify Brand Safety Rate is defined as a measure of how frequently ads appeared adjacent to content that met advertiser-approved criteria. Apparently they were wrong about X having poor brand safety rates and are now right about X having 99.9% brand safety rates? 99.9% brand safety? On X? Really? Makes us question how are advertisers setting their "approved criteria" and how brand safety rate is being defined.
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Anyone that’s been on X lately and is a functioning human being knows it’s littered with brand safety issues. How the heck is X 99.9% brand safe?!
(it's not brand safe)
DoubleVerify says they had this wrong before and we’re pretty sure they … still have it wrong. Either that or they have a very warped definition of ‘brand safety’ (likely both). No wonder trust is eroding in our industry. We can’t even trust the verification companies. Big picture, these types of stories (which seem like a weekly occurrence as of late) will force marketers to demand more transparency from their partners. And when we’re focused on trust and transparency issues, we take our eye off the ball from more important things like performance, efficiency, and business outcomes. Not good.
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