When people think of advertising analytics vendors that offer an insight in to the viewability of ad inventory, Moat is often top of most minds. Now it is also part of one of the biggest IT companies on the planet.
New York-based Moat, founded seven years ago, has signed an agreement to be acquired by Oracle in what will be one of the biggest examples yet of marketing technology companies acquiring in to ad-tech.
And now Moat is taking its viewability technology in to the upfronts, the season in which US TV networks tout their upcoming content in order to sell to advertisers.
Speaking in this video interview with Beet.TV, Moat CEO Jonah Goodhart revealed Fox, through its true[X] ad engagement subsidiary, will be trying to sell advertisers based on “attention” as measured through a Moat partnership.
“We’re specifically doing something with Fox, coming up for this year’s upfronts, where they are really focused on attention, on how to understand … attention in television, connected TV, other types of environments,” he said.
“We are Fox’s partner where we start with measuring viewability, moving on to time and ultimately asking questions like, ‘How long was somebody there? What did they do?’, ‘Did they interact with the ad?’ [and] ’Did they choose do be there?… ‘
“With Fox, we’re applying [our] technology to understand attention in the environments they create.” Fox’s upfront presentation takes place on May 15.
It comes as Moat’s acquisition by Oracle serves as another indicator of ad-tech consolidation, after TubeMogul was acquired by Adobe late in 2016.
Moat’s product suite includes online analytics for advertising, including insight in to the visibility of video advertising. Oracle plans to integrate the company in to its existing Oracle Data Cloud – a suite for targeting, delivering and measuring online advertising which claims to have over five billion unique consumer profiles.
Oracle has bought in to ad-tech in recent years through Bluekai and Vitrue. It says Moat “will remain an independent platform within” its own offering.
Moat’s star has risen as concern has grown over the extent of fraudulent ad impressions and inventory that is not even viewable by human users, and especially since the Media Ratings Council (MRC) codified guidelines for viewable ad impressions as a consequence in 2014. Now the company claims over 600 clients.
In a letter to its customers, Oracle says:
“Oracle plans to continue investing in Moat. We expect this will include more functionality and capabilities at a quicker pace. In addition, Moat customers will benefit from better integration and alignment with Oracle’s other product offerings.
“Oracle and Moat are committed to keeping Moat an open measurement and analytics platform, with deep integrations and partnerships across the entire digital publisher and adtech landscape.”
Oracle claims media spending worth more than $4bn was enhanced by capabilities of its Data Cloud last year.
Update: Peter Kafka reports in recode that Oracle is paying over $850 million for the acquisition.
This segment is part of a series leading up to the 2017 TV Upfront. It is presented by FreeWheel. To find more videos from the series, please visit this page.
