Frequently asked questions about how to go beyond ad verification with Moat Analytics

The bridge between understanding the need to advance your digital measurement tactics to fully implementing those strategies into your unique processes can feel like a big task.

Fortunately, the team at Moat by Oracle Data Cloud has years of experience working on the front lines with all types of clients across the digital spectrum, including publishers, brands, and agencies. As innovators championing the concept of going beyond verification and measuring true consumer attention, there is no group better equipped to help digital media players nail performance and convey results.       

Recently, the Moat team shared their expertise on a webinar in partnership with Adweek. The session, Explore the New Frontier of Measurement: From Ad Fraud to Attention, delved into a variety of important insights conveying the value of going beyond clicks and impressions, and understanding the nuances of human attention, especially as digital channels continue to morph.

To keep the conversation going, we’re reprising the questions asked during the webinar’s Q&A session and answered by our host, Peter Kuhn, Senior Director at Moat by Oracle Data Cloud. As a bonus, we include additional questions we were unable to answer live. Read on to become more informed.

We don’t have the bandwidth to figure out how to use attention metrics as part of our marketing strategy. How can Moat help us navigate the constraint on internal resources?

Peter: Moat can support your pre- and post-sales, go-to-market strategy in a variety of ways, with client-facing templates detailing attention narratives. We can further help you customize your message toward your unique strengths and offer additional training for sales and marketing teams. We highly encourage you to reach out to one of our reps to discuss your needs.

How can advertisers move away from more antiquated video KPIs like Completion Rate?

Peter: Illustrate how sight, sound, and motion work together inclusive of the Video Completion Rate. For example, metrics like Percentage of video played in-view + Audible Rate + Completion Rate + Completion Quality translates to: Did people watch? Did they listen? Did they complete? If they completed, was video in-view with audio enabled? Ask what role audio actually plays in your creative messaging, and how that may vary by platform.

How does Moat strengthen my ad effectiveness for direct response vs awareness campaigns?

Peter: Great question, and we believe we are well-positioned to help you do both. In all cases, understanding how behavioral signals are applied to your KPIs is instrumental for success. For awareness, you need to understand signals like time-spent across display and video; sight, sound, and motion for video (an ideal proxy for branding). For direct response, engagement signals like interaction rate and touch rate on display tie your customer engagement journey together to let you evaluate what kind of impact you make, and allow you to optimize against the signals that indicate success.

I speak to many measurement vendors who don’t seem to have unique capabilities in Connected TV (CTV). What makes your CTV measurement different?

Peter: We currently have seven measurement pixels to detect separate CTV events, like invalid traffic, Impression, Video Start, 1st quartile, 2nd quartile, 3rd quartile, and Video Complete. Also, our first-to-market SDK (to be integrated by media partners) provides optimal precision, because it enables always-on measurement at scale, including second-by-second attention that shows true cross-channel video ad comparisons.

Does Moat provide benchmarks?

Peter: Yes! Moat provides access to global, regional, and bespoke benchmarks (based on your aggregated network) that give media buyers and sellers the necessary clarification into real-time inventory and campaign performance. View our 2019 Q4 benchmarks here.

Can you provide more thought leadership or resource material on invalid traffic (IVT)?

Peter: Yes! We have a comprehensive white paper that goes into depth on the subject and Moat’s positioning. If there’s one thing I’ll leave you with now, it’s beware of vendors that surface false positives. Those hurt marketers just as much as actual fraud because they mislead you away from profitable environments that generate brand impact. We do a lot of work internally to ensure this isn’t the case with our detection.

Can Moat help me evaluate campaign success for branded content?

Peter: Yes! We have integrations that focus on content, both display and video, which provide verification and advanced attention signals that apply to readership and viewership of content in a complementary way to how we measure ads. For example, we measure the percentage of video watched for ads and can apply that capability to the content the ad sponsors.

You referenced a Facebook example and 3rd party data. Aren't they still a walled garden?

Peter: Yes; however, we offer a direct integration with Facebook (and many other social platforms) that extends Moat's trusted measurement onto their platform for transparency.

We are running into a problem with our brand where the copy testing score is high, but recall is low. Has Moat explored ways to measure long-term salience? Any way to measure that?

Peter: Time spent is an excellent proxy for awareness, and your success in capturing user attention. The longer a consumer spends with your ad in-view, the higher the likelihood of imprinting your brand message. For video, our “Percent of Video Played In-View” is the ideal measure to understand how much of your video ad users watch, and thus indicates how far upstream in your strategy you need to make optimizations to improve the likelihood consumers watch. In addition, we offer extra metrics that capture audibility for ads optimized for sound. After all, if you don't see or hear an ad, you can't remember it.

How do you optimize to these desired outcomes when programmatic limits most optimizations to one KPI?

Peter: It's all about the behavioral journey. Look at a combination of metrics that tell a story about how consumers engage with advertising inclusive of, but not limited to, one KPI. That will tell you whether your chosen KPI is indeed the ideal metric to focus on, and also how to strategically pivot as outcomes change.

Interested in learning more about Moat and how the team’s methodologies can improve your measurement strategies? First, watch the webinar if you haven’t already, and then check out these other great resources:

• Moat Demo

• Free Guide: Capturing Consumer Attention to Achieve Campaign Success

• Free Guide: How to Protect Your Ad Spend from Invalid Traffic