The Mechanics of Independent Social Media Measurement

Third-party ad verification on social media platforms and proprietary media gardens is essential for maintaining transparency and trust in the digital advertising ecosystem. Independence is a cornerstone of quality ad verification and DV actively works with each platform to ensure that the integration supports DV’s quality standards for its solutions. 

Below, we’ll share insights into our rigorous methodologies and standards, which uphold the integrity of our verification processes.

Upholding Accuracy and Integrity: DV’s Comprehensive Approach

At DV, we’ve developed a comprehensive approach to ensuring that our integration with social platforms is seamless and upholds the highest standards of accuracy and integrity.

Technical Integration and Quality Reviews: Our approach goes beyond simply accessing platform data. We embed our technology within these environments, utilize our own tags when possible, and establish server-to-server connections to confirm the data meets the quality standards for our solutions. This enables us to provide comprehensive and rigorous third-party verification.

Ensuring High Standards Through Proprietary Technology: Before we offer our services on a platform, our engineering team performs a comprehensive evaluation to build and adapt our technology specific to each environment. This includes testing the data before going live to ensure that our processes and solutions are fully integrated and can operate effectively within each platform’s unique constraints. The integrations are designed to collect, evaluate and action on data in a way that upholds strict privacy standards and respects each platform’s user confidentiality.

Ongoing Accuracy Reviews: Once integrated, we don’t just set up systems and step away. We conduct ongoing anomaly detection and monitoring to ensure our data remains precise and reliable. These reviews require continuous assessments to verify that our standards are met and that we fine-tune our approach as platform dynamics evolve.

Regular Audits of Validity and Independence: DV’s integrations require that we have access to all of the underlying event signals that go into each industry-standard metric. This is necessary in order to independently validate that the metric standards set by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Tech Lab, the Media Rating Council (MRC) and the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) are being met. This applies to DV reports across all platforms, whether accredited or not. These audits and evaluations are critical for meeting the highest standards of transparency and fairness.

Advocacy for Greater Access: DV advocates for increased transparency and access within the digital advertising ecosystem. We continuously engage with social platforms, walled gardens, and all our partners, pushing for more extensive access and expanded controls to meet the growing needs of global marketers. Our relentless push for greater transparency is not just about participating in the conversation — it’s about leading it.

Industry Collaboration: We encourage brands and agency partners to join us in pushing for greater access and transparency from social platforms. This collective effort is essential for continuing to advance third-party scoring and ensuring the integrity of digital advertising.

The Way Forward

DV welcomes the constructive criticism of independent auditors. But undue, biased or uninformed skepticism can inadvertently empower platforms to obscure their practices and shield media quality and performance from greater scrutiny. By collectively pushing for greater transparency, we can ensure that platforms open their doors wider.

DV is committed to leading the industry toward a more transparent and accountable digital advertising landscape. We believe that with continued collaboration and open dialogue among all stakeholders, we can achieve a higher standard of media quality and performance assurance that benefits everyone in the ecosystem.

This piece is part of DoubleVerify’s newly launched Transparency Center, a dedicated portal designed to educate the industry about DV technology and measurement. By providing detailed explanations, insights and timely statements on key issues, we aim to foster trust and transparency within the digital advertising ecosystem.