DoubleVerify, a software platform for digital media measurement and analytics, is on a mission to try and make the advertising industry safer, stronger and more secure.
Imram Masood, DoubleVerify’s country manager for AUNZ, said the company does this by ensuring that all of the datasets that are available through the platform provide value - both for a brand to ensure they can invest in the right environments on the internet, as well as for publishers to ensure that they're creating the right content for advertisers and consumers to monetise their business as best as possible.
“If you think about seven or eight years ago, when agencies or brands were thinking about verification and measurement, it was really as a hygiene solution,” said Masood.
“‘Once I've bought ads on the internet, can someone tell me if they're appearing in the right place, are they being seen, are they appearing in brand-safe content?’ That's the way it used to be because post the campaign being run, it's really hard for you to do anything to optimise that space apart from to plan a little bit differently.
“What we brought to the market was the connectivity between the measurement side of your business and your buying platforms. It basically means that when data is coming through about certain types of content that's working or not working for you, those data segments are being fed directly into your buying platforms in real time, so you can optimise and directly impact performance.”
Research published back in November of last year by DoubleVerify showed that in Australia, 52% of respondents said they are spending more time each day consuming content now than they did pre-pandemic (55% globally).
The study also found almost half (49%) of Australian respondents reported buying more items online now than they did pre-pandemic, a little behind the global average of 54%. Nearly half (47%) of Australians highlighted they use digital content to inform planned purchases more often than they did before the pandemic.
Masood said DoubleVerify has partnered with most of the major retail ad networks locally and globally; he said what he’s seeing more often than not is the marketer trying to understand trade dollars versus advertising media dollars, and understanding where the synergy is to help drive sales.
“That's where we're seeing the rise in the growth of retail media networks in Australia,” he said.
“From a media side of things, the standardisation of all formats driven by the IAB allows you to have a holistic and consistent view of measurement across the entire industry.
“The retail media networks will take their first party data from their retail stores onto the open market to help find those audiences and help deliver sales. The on-network side of things in terms of investment from media is where we work with brands or those retailers most because that's about ensuring the formats are as close to industry standard as possible, so it allows scale of measurement and transparency for a brand.
“That will help any retailer that's operating in this space to be able to confidently position their product to an advertiser to ensure that they have transparency, confidence in where the dollars are going and that they’re actually delivering a return or an outcome for their business,” said Masood.
Masood said that one of the reasons he joined DoubleVerify was due to the pace at which verification and media quality was moving in terms of innovation, how the algorithms are evolving and how the company is connecting and closing the data loops.
“It creates a huge opportunity in the market, not just for our business, but for all brands, agencies or publishers,” he said.
“In a single ad call, there could be 300 lines of data that are in that one single impression; an ad server might use 30% of that data to deliver on its services to a consumer. What we do through that ad call is take 50 to 100 different parts of those lines of data to create smarter, media-quality metrics.
“Being able to do that immediately allows you to see and optimise your existing buy. If you're buying a million impressions, now you can see that 5% or 25% of the supply you're buying isn't right for your specific brand and your specific message - in real time, you can now make those adjustments.”
Internally, DoubleVerify has seen strong growth in the region, partly driven by the global company focusing on expansion outside of traditional markets, being “incredibly supportive” of the likes of Australia, New Zealand and parts of Southeast Asia.
“We’ve been able to deploy, scale and resource really quickly. The company has said for us to be successful on a global level, we need to expand and we need to invest in resource and capability into the regions," said Masood.
"It was actually quite difficult building a team in Australia during COVID; we had four people when I started in December of 2019 and we're at 12 people now locally, and it'll continue to grow over the next 12 months with the growth and success that we're having.
“The great thing is while we had challenges with talent coming into the country, we have amazing talent in Australia with very diverse backgrounds as well. We've got people in our team that have got TV backgrounds, very technical analytical backgrounds, traditional sales backgrounds and more.”
Masood said that building a small team that's diverse with experience is the key to some of DoubleVerify’s success, as the wide range of backgrounds helps to engender healthy, respectful debate about how the company should do business both in Australia and with specific clients.
“That's really allowed everybody here, even through Zoom calls until we’ve come back to the office, to learn from one another, to challenge one another respectfully, and also to grow in terms of how we bring our amazing business to the marketplace, but also how we learn about our business,” he said.
“In the market, I think the success we’ve seen has really come from businesses that have been ready to think about ‘what are we doing with all this data that we've got? We've been using ad servers for however long, we've had some sort of verification solution that's been telling us some sort of report post campaign, and I know there's an opportunity for us to really understand how we can optimise that existing dollar’.
“Especially when we're going into uncertain times economically, advertisers and agencies have really been thinking about how they’re going to help deliver the same or better results for partners, customers and brands next year. Here's one area of optimisation and one area of efficiency that hasn't ever really been leveraged at scale."
Cecilia Xue - Account Management, Team Lead
What’s the biggest challenge in your role?
Consistently maximising the information delivered to our clients and partners and minimising the complexity is the biggest challenge in my role, as well as across the industry. Our digital advertising ecosystem has huge swathes of rich data so we’re on a constant quest to simplify and optimise. It’s actually a positive challenge to continuously improve and find a better approach.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Every day is different for me, as each client or partner is unique regarding account maturity or business goals. But typically, my day will always be focused on how we can better help our clients to achieve their outcomes. This includes things like education sessions and workshops around how to maximise value from the existing products used and data insights or simply being there to answer their questions.
What attracted you to DoubleVerify?
What I am passionate about is innovation and DoubleVerify is one of the leaders in the industry. We constantly push the boundaries and listen to the market needs to create new solutions. This was a key driver behind me joining DoubleVerify and being part of the journey to better shape the industry and provide confidence in a brand’s digital investment.
What are you focused on for 2023?
Helping my clients, partners or anyone in the industry to better understand the importance of transparency and values from the data and insights uncovered through DoubleVerify is my focus for 2023. Data is just a number if we cannot digest and organise it. The real value lies in the ability to deliver rich insights. We would like to act as a partner to our clients to maximise the value of the partnership to deliver better outcomes to achieve our vision of making the digital advertising ecosystem stronger, safer, and more secure.
What do you love most about your role?
I love how much we care about our products and I love the great team I work with. The areas I like the most from my role are the constant learning, the sense of achievement from helping my clients through any challenges, and the positive impact we have on the industry. They make my role more meaningful.
David Shen, Enterprise Sales Director
What does a typical day look like for you?
It always starts with strong, copious amounts of caffeine, and as I have a toddler, it is usually very early! After breakfast and the daycare drop-off, I'll start working through my priority task list, which typically includes a lot of client and partner meetings to help them see the verification light! I generally find time to fit in some exercise (and more caffeine) in the afternoon. We’re lucky to enjoy flexible working hours so being able to truly maintain a work/life balance is fantastic.
What do you love most about your role?
As part of a tightly-knit group, I love knowing exactly what my and the team members’ roles and responsibilities are. It creates such a great open, conversational and fluid dynamic that allows you to really focus on your goals.
What are you focused on for 2023?
There have been a lot of conversations around the scope of the verification space, so the focus is on working with our current partners on what's to come in the second half of the year, and being able to have new conversations in-market with anyone who's keen to learn more about this space.
What attracted you to DoubleVerify?
There are two definite factors that attracted me to DoubleVerify: the tech and the people.
Coming from an agency background, I was always interested in the tech side of the industry, as it drives so much of the influence and innovation of the industry, but I never had the opportunity to delve too deeply into it. It’s now very rewarding to be so deeply specialised and ‘under the hood’.
The people made it a no brainer for me. I missed being part of a smaller, agile and impactful team. The icing on the cake was knowing I’d become part of an amazing culture - I had previously worked with my colleagues so I knew what to expect!
What’s the biggest challenge in your role?
The biggest challenge in my role as an Enterprise Sales Director is being able to deep dive with our advertisers and partners to understand their priorities and identify where they are on their verification journey. Our goal is to work with them to help them see verification as more than just the 'hygiene' part of their tech solution; it can help them drive performance too!
Jisoo Kim, Account Manager
What attracted you to DoubleVerify?
Sandwich Wednesdays are awesome but I feel passionate about the company's vision to "make the advertising ecosystem stronger, safer and more secure". In an era with so much content and information out in the open, we should all try to be responsible for making the online ecosystem better for future generations. I’m proud and happy to be working at a company that supports my passion.
What are you focused on for 2023?
Having previously worked in a media agency, I know how much work goes into planning, executing, and optimising campaigns. My focus for the remaining months of 2023 is to raise the importance of brand safety and measurement, and work closely with our agency and advertisers on how DoubleVerify can drive value for media partners. This means they can spend less time worrying about media quality and focus on optimising and making an impact.
What’s the biggest challenge in your role?
As an Account Manager at DoubleVerify, I work closely with different media partners on proving the value of verification and educating the market on quickly evolving, innovative solutions and measurements available. With the complexity of the industry, it's not always easy getting everyone to be as passionate about verification as we are at DoubleVerify, but we try our best to make it fun and informative.
What do you love most about your role?
Impactful work and growth. The constant growth and learning opportunities in the fast-paced environment keep me on my toes. Having been with the business for almost a year, I have already learned so much, but knowing there's still more to come is exciting. I feel so lucky to work with a great team that constantly inspires me to grow and impact the market together.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Some days I will be in back-to-back client meetings hosting education sessions and discussing how we can optimise a brand’s ads towards a more brand-suitable environment. Other days, I will be juggling troubleshooting across five different spreadsheets. I love that everyday is different and that each day comes with different challenges and achievements.
John Aban - Senior Implementation Manager APAC
What are you focused on for 2023?
This year, the implementation team is focused on three key areas: Innovation, Scale and Growth. For example, when it comes to innovation, we’re helping our clients fully realise the power of some of our newer products, including DV Authentic Attention®. For Scale, we’re focused on building automated workflows and building knowledge repositories. For Growth, we’re expanding the ecosystem of media partners we work with.
What’s the biggest challenge in your role?
I spend a lot of time helping our media partners understand how to correctly implement DoubleVerify’s tagging technology. If a media partner doesn’t have a dedicated technical AdOps person or team, we will work with their client’s media planning team or account management, which can require additional patience. However, it's also a great opportunity to build a relationship with them given that we work with mutual clients!
What do you love most about your role?
What I love most about my role is that I am always learning because of the constantly changing ad tech space. Being part of a company that is global makes it even better, as we get insight and inspiration from teams around the world. It has been wonderful to see how much growth the Australian team has had in the past years and we are still continuing to grow with the company.
Being in a regional role, I get to work with a variety of people across different markets, from media agencies, publishers to ad tech partners, which also enriches my knowledge.
What does a typical day look like for you?
We work on a queue-based system, so a typical day for me starts with picking up and assigning cases to work on throughout the day. This usually includes a mix of tag requests and troubleshooting, which takes up a chunk of my day. This will then be followed with responding to client enquiries over email or jumping on a call with clients for support and training. I also do a lot of collaboration across different teams. And when I'm not busy working with cases, I usually work on upskilling myself by making use of the company resources available to us via taking LinkedIn courses and getting professional coaching (through Modern Health).
What attracted you to DoubleVerify?
I have always believed in media ad verification and its mission to help brands improve the effectiveness of their online advertising, giving them clarity and confidence in their digital investments. DoubleVerify is the best in its class and it’s helping make the digital advertising ecosystem stronger, safer and more secure. Knowing that DoubleVerify is at the forefront of innovation and progress motivated me to join the company.
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