In a rare act of unity, News UK, Guardian News & Media and The Telegraph have partnered together to launch The Verified Marketplace, a premium publishers’ marketplace for outstream video ad inventory.
Run by Unruly, which was acquired by News UK’s parent company News Corp in 2015, The Verified Marketplace will be a place to buy desktop and mobile outstream video inventory on the Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun.
“There is a clear demand from advertisers for high quality video inventory and greater media collaboration to make buying easier and more effective,” said Hamish Nicklin, chief revenue officer at Guardian News & Media.
“The Verified Marketplace is a significant step towards giving advertisers access to some of the very best video ad formats online, and providing more certainty around brand safety and viewability. We look forward to testing this new proposition and working with the industry to deliver the best in digital advertising.”
The marketplace, which will be accessible via the UnrulyX platform, will guarantee quality content and environments for advertisers with a potential audience of over 39.4 million unique users. It aims to meet the ad industry’s growing demand for high-quality video ads on trusted, brand-safe sites.
“The Verified Marketplace provides us with a new, safe and innovative way to deliver branded video content. Our influential consumers are highly sought-after audiences for the UK’s most premium brands,” said Dora Michail, MD of digital, The Telegraph.
The quality of the ads will be independently verified by Integral Ad Science and MOAT, and advertisers will be able to access the marketplace through the Unruly team.
Jason Trout, Unruly’s EMEA MD, said the marketplace will give advertisers “peace of mind” at a time when trust in the programmatic ecosystem is at an all-time low – and that it will solve the problem of scarcity of genuinely premium, verifiably brand safe and viewable video environments.
The partnership comes after research increasingly shows that newsbrands deliver the most impactful ad campaigns, including a recent study led by Peter Field/IPA that proved that video ads run on news titles are 43% more likely to deliver market share growth.
Additional findings reveal that ad consideration on publisher-branded sites is 60% higher in comparison to ads on sites without publisher branding, and 152% higher among readers with a close relationship to the publisher.
Robin O’Neill, managing director, digital trading GroupM, said: “At GroupM we have long believed in the many positive benefits associated with professionally produced, high-quality content for our clients advertising campaigns. We also require the ability to independently verify delivery and performance of campaigns.
“The Verified Marketplace delivers both of these in allowing easy access to video inventory at scale, in a range of iconic titles and we are fully supportive of this initiative. GroupM will continue to push for greater levels of collaboration from publishers in order to bring our clients quality media with the ability to transact at scale.”
