Integral Ad Science - closing a critical technology gap
I joined Integral Ad Science to run product for their publisher business, and soon after was given responsibility for mobile and video product as well, including CTV.
When I joined, IAS was facing a significant issue - they had no ability to generate their own VAST tags, and relied on a third party vendor to generate tags for them. To make matters worse, that vendor was acquired by DoubleVerify, one of their key competitors, and the service was about to be discontinued. The service would shut off in three months, which would have taken our video revenue to zero.
We resolved this critical issue in about a year, resulting in an immediate boost to revenue and our ability to measure on all platforms. Mobile video revenue rose 100%, overall video revenue grew 15%, and tag operating costs fell about 25%.
COMPANY
Integral Ad Science
ROLE
VP of Product, Publisher, Video and Mobile
FOCUS
Product management
Management
Partnerships
In order for a verification company to be able to measure video, they need to be able to add code to the existing VAST tag, either through a secondary wrapper tag or by directly modifying the tag itself.
VAST has been an extremely successful standard, and as a result it is used to deliver video to virtually all devices where digital video is viewed - desktop, mobile, CTV, etc. A problem arises because the measurement code required to measure correctly differs based on where the ad is delivered. If a company like IAS did not have the ability to dynamically generate the correct VAST tags for each type of device, they would not be able to offer a competitive measurement service across all devices.
My team identified and brought in two potential providers who could help us generate our own tags, and tested them against each other, ultimately selecting Publica. Both ran in production in an A/B test and performed about the same, so I decided on the engineers' feedback and on Publica's focus on CTV rather than desktop. We were then able to negotiate with Publica to buy the technology and incorporate it into our own tech stack, rather than remain dependent on a third party. My mandate was only to replace the vendor, but another outside vendor would have left us open to the same thing happening again.
We were also able to avoid what we thought was too costly an acquisition and just gain the technology as a win-win for both us and Publica, who was not focused in this area.
IAS later acquired Publica outright.