Having been in the forefront of tackling digital advertising challenges like fraud and viewability, GroupM has no false illusions about what awaits the company and its clients abroad. “As digital grows around the world and complexity sets in the same way as it has here, exactly the same problems occur,” says John Montgomery, Chairman of GroupM Connect North America.
“All of those issues are global issues,” he says in an interview with Beet.TV. “Unilever and Nestle are as deeply concerned about it as a global issue as they are in the U.S.”
GroupM wants to have a single viewability standard around the world. In markets where there is no Media Rating Council, “we want to make sure that our clients ads are viewed as much as possible, are not exposed to fraud and don’t appear on pirate sites,” Montgomery says.
Calling it a “daunting challenge,” he nonetheless believes there are a “couple of quick wins” where GroupM can scale what it’s done in the U.S. with the Trust Accountability Group, an industry initiative that fights criminal activity in the digital advertising supply chain.
“Clearly markets like China where much of the ads are still first-party served by the publishers, the measurement isn’t in place for us to do sophisticated verification and viewability measurement yet, but we could tackle things like third-party ad serving,” says Montgomery.
GroupM will start in the top 10 or 12 foreign markets that cover “probably 80% of the digital spend,” taking what it’s learned domestically and “customizing it for the individual countries.”
Shifting gears to providing the best customer experience for its brand marketer clients, Montgomery has a message for those who will attend DMEXCO 2016 in Cologne in mid September. “If we don’t get the quality of the experience right for consumers in digital more people will move to ad blocking,” he says. “I think it’s largely intuitive. Certainly there are people who use ad blockers because they can, but I think there’s a certain number of people, I would think the majority of people, are blocking because of the experience.”
This video is part of “The Road to DMEXCO ’16,” a lead-up series with key influencers on the topics and trends to be addressed at DMEXCO. This series is presented by YuMe. Please visit this page for additional segments.
