Social Media Platform
X’s brand safety score on DoubleVerify, one of the main sources for media holding companies to check the safety and suitability of a particular platform for advertising campaigns, erroneously showed a low number from late October last year until last month. It had been.
DoubleVerify (DV) noted that the underlying data was correct and only the displayed graphics were incorrect, but X said the low numbers deterred advertisers from spending on the platform. .
This follows the takeover of the social media platform by a group of owners led by Elon Musk, citing advertisers’ concerns about content moderation policies that could damage their brands by advertising on the platform. This is because companies are cutting back on spending on social media platforms.
“The industry says no platform should grade homework,” Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at X, told FOX Business. “Get a third-party verifier. Don’t tell someone else that our brand is safe and tell someone else that our brand is safe and that the entire market is pouring all its cash into these companies.” Let me tell you, DoubleVerify is one of them. We deepened our partnership with them at the request of every media holding company and every major brand marketer.”
A media holding company that manages advertising campaigns and spend for many well-known corporate brands checks the brand safety scores and brand suitability ratings of various platforms for the campaigns it engages in.
DoubleVerify and Integrated Ad Science have emerged as the leading sources for these numbers, with an industry-standard brand safety score of 99%, a benchmark that platforms should aspire to.
Benarroch said that during the period when DoubleVerify provided inaccurate numbers, X’s brand safety ratings ranged from the 70s to the 90s, below benchmarks, and as a result advertisers were discouraged from running campaigns on X. He said that he was particularly reluctant to do so.
This has had a ripple effect on the media holding company, which has a number of brands, and has pulled back from advertising on X because it has been found “time and time again” to be less secure than rival platforms, Benarroch said. said.
He said Company X has invested heavily in additional brand safety tools since CEO Linda Yaccarino joined the company in June, and that the company has “corrected what was said, even though it wasn’t an issue.” He added that he was allocating an “incalculable” amount of time and investment to “trying to do this.” For us it was a problem. ”
“Advertisers rely on tools and accurate evaluations to make advertising partnership decisions,” X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a post on the platform, adding, “The error has now been acknowledged. We urge the advertisers who committed the wrongdoing to apologize and have been corrected.” The decision to partner with Company X based on incorrect data needs to be reconsidered. ”
“DoubleVerify recently discovered a graphical error in the display of X Brand Safety Ratings on DV’s Pinnacle dashboard. As a result, erroneously lower rates were displayed,” DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski said in a letter to customers. ” will be displayed.
“Specifically, DoubleVerify’s dashboard incorrectly reflected the campaign’s brand conformance rate in the brand safety rate in Pinnacle’s overview graphic. Although the underlying data available at DV Pinnacle was accurate; “The graphical visualization was the only thing that didn’t represent the brand safety factor,” Zagorski wrote.
“This mislabeling occurred over a four-and-a-half month period from October 24, 2023 to March 14, 2024, when the DV fix was made. All current and retrospective brand safety data is “The display error was not present in other areas of the UI, such as incident reports or rollover data details,” he explained.
“Based on DoubleVerify metrics, X’s brand safety rate across all campaigns we measured exceeded 99.99% from October 2023 to date. This is based on DV’s global industry data. , which means that X’s brand safety rate exceeds the global benchmark for brand safety.
“DoubleVerify takes measurement accuracy and reporting seriously. “We apologize for any confusion this may have caused to X and our customers as we reviewed the performance of our campaign on X,” Zagorski wrote.
He added that DV is working with Company X to ensure that future reports accurately reflect the brand safety performance of campaigns on the platform, and that DV is working with He added that he is working on a review.
