The UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster ITV has turned to Meetrics, an advertising measurement and analytics firm, for advertising campaign delivery validation for video on demand (VOD) advertising across its ITV Hub platforms.

The partnership sees Meetrics provide video viewability data and reporting for ITV Hub on connected TV platforms and in-app, as well as desktop and mobile web campaigns. By choosing Meetrics, ITV becomes the ‘first’ broadcaster in the world to make use of the IAB Open Measurement SDK, the IAB Tech Lab’s third-party in-app ad viewability and measurement tool.

“Partnering with Meetrics has demonstrated ITV’s commitment to verifying the value of our broadcast quality digital inventory via independent measurement,” said Frank Mulhall, head of ad operations at ITV. “The move starts the process of raising standards for online video that only broadcasters can achieve in line with our clients’ expectations. Advertisers invest large sums in media to drive both brand and response, and whilst partial viewing of ads is still seen as acceptable in some areas of digital advertising, we believe that investment means that advertising should be seen by people and seen in full.”

According to Meetrics, average measurement for campaigns running across ITV Hub has so far showed a viewability rate of 98 per cent compared to the industry viewability benchmarks defined by the Media Ratings Council (MRC).

“Our strategic partnership will demonstrate the high quality of ITV’s video ad inventory and set new standards in viewability measurements across various channels,” said Max von Hilgers, co-founder and managing director at Meetrics. “ITV is committed to give its clients full transparency over their campaign delivery and to do so it showed technological leadership by investing in their own technology stack, new industry standards, and independent measurement solutions. ITV is responding directly to what advertisers are demanding; budgets for video ads are getting larger, while video inventory, which is proven to be of high quality, is limited.