kickstarting the quality revolution
kickstarting the quality revolution with Erez Levin
We all know that not all impressions are created equal – but in many cases we’re paying the same price for a wide spectrum of unequal ads, many of dubious quality.
In this powerful presentation, Erez Levin, media futurist and ad quality evangelist, implores Marketers to move beyond simple reach and binary metrics like viewability to focus on media quality signals that better predict incremental marketing outcomes.
As identity-based targeting weakens and channels like Connected TV grow, the attributes of the ad placement itself—such as attention potential (screen prominence, audibility, time on screen) and situational context (content environment, time of day, device, geography)—are becoming critical indicators of effectiveness.
Drawing on his new CIMM white paper “Navigating Quality,” here are some of the presentation highlights:
- The programmatic ecosystem has drifted toward low-quality inventory, with insufficient price differentiation due to over-reliance on “vanity” metrics like viewability and completed views. This has created a quality problem in programmatic ads.
- Media quality should be defined by attributes that predict effectiveness independent of identity—in particular, attention (prominence, audibility, screen time) and receptiveness (context, environment).
- Effective marketing depends on a “quality trifecta”, three pillars that include media quality, creative quality, and audience/data quality (with media quality the most often overlooked).
- Impressions should not be treated as interchangeable commodities; instead, marketers need probabilistic, long-term measurement approaches that account for context and quality.
- Practical next steps: Marketers should assess and experiment with quality-based buying, especially for CTV, by considering factors like time of day and content context. They should leverage quality controls to optimize budget and overall campaign effectiveness.
bio
EREZ LEVIN
Principal, Emet Advisory
Erez has become the industry’s most persistent advocate for Quality-based buying and measurement practices. Named “Whistleblower of the Year” by MediaPost for his work exposing the gap between how video inventory is classified and how it actually performs, Levin has argued consistently that the industry must course correct away from an over-reliance on undefined “Outcomes” to setting “Quality” as our North Star, with Media Quality serving as the primary driver of all media buying and measurement decisions. This would facilitate moving from easily-gamed attribution metrics toward signals that reliably predict whether an ad had a meaningful opportunity to influence a consumer over the short and long terms.