10 November, 2021

DoubleVerify To Acquire OpenSlate, Extending Social Video And CTV Capabilities

Edited by B&T Magazine

DoubleVerify has announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire OpenSlate (“OpenSlate”), a pre-campaign contextual targeting platform that enables brands to align advertising with suitable or contextually relevant content across social video and CTV.

The acquisition of OpenSlate is a cash and stock transaction valued at $150 million and is expected to close this quarter (the “Acquisition”).

“DV’s mission is to make digital advertising stronger, safer and more secure, giving global brands clarity and confidence in their digital investments,” said Mark Zagorski, DoubleVerify CEO (pictured).

“Our strategy in support of this mission is to verify everywhere – across channels, formats, platforms and geographies. The combination with OpenSlate fully supports this approach. OpenSlate’s pre-campaign solutions perfectly complement DV’s post-campaign measurement capabilities across CTV and social environments. Integrating the two provides advertisers with unparalleled end-to-end brand safety, suitability and contextual optimisation. No other company will be able to deliver a fully-owned, integrated solution across the leading social and CTV walled gardens.”

OpenSlate’s solutions provide insight into the nature and quality of ad-supported content on large, video-driven social platforms, such as Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.

Founded in 2012, OpenSlate evaluates video for brand safety, suitability and context, and offers customers proven “pre-activation” controls to ensure advertisers can effectively target the most appropriate and impactful content.

OpenSlate operates across 37 international markets and supports leading agency holding companies and 200+ large global brands, including Coca-Cola, Facebook, Kimberly-Clark, Pfizer and Unilever.

Cookie deprecation, concerns about brand suitability and the ongoing decline of traditional measurement solutions in a highly digital ad world have created a challenge for advertisers seeking to better target and measure the impact of their ad spend.

The combination of DoubleVerify and OpenSlate provides the most comprehensive toolset available to tackle these challenges – paving the way for continued expansion of social video and CTV advertising, which are expected to grow to $56B and $16B respectively by 2023.

The Acquisition will further expand DV’s value to advertisers in social video and CTV, reinforcing coverage while deepening already unmatched product leadership and innovation.

OpenSlate’s pre-activation targeting controls combined with DV’s granular post-flight measurement will create the industry’s most comprehensive, end-to-end brand safety, suitability and contextual platform for social video and CTV.

By leveraging this unified targeting and quality measurement suite, advertisers can more seamlessly optimise campaigns, maximise consumer engagement and drive ROI.

“The OpenSlate team is thrilled to join forces with DoubleVerify – an industry-leading, rapidly expanding, global organisation with best-in-class media quality and performance capabilities,” said Mike Henry, OpenSlate CEO.

“Integrating with DV will be a natural evolution for our technology and will accelerate our ability to provide advertisers with comprehensive brand safety, suitability, and contextual solutions across social video and CTV.”

DV has over a decade of experience building digital transparency and trust in the advertising ecosystem, protecting brand reputation and driving performance. Central to its trust is DV’s independence, offering unbiased measurement across leading social, mobile, video, and programmatic platforms to meet the evolving needs of advertisers.

In acquiring OpenSlate, DV brings together two objective, third-party measurement platforms – both of which are ad-server agnostic, with neither being party to the media transaction or the ad monetisation process.

“We believe that maintaining our independence across the digital advertising ecosystem gives our customers and partners assurance that we are objective, unbiased and independent – with no potential conflicts of interest,” said Zagorski.

“As a result, we have built a foundation of trust, transparency and interoperability that is unmatched in the market. The addition of OpenSlate strengthens that reputation and commitment.”

DV powers media quality and performance everywhere. DV solutions let advertisers protect brand equity, maximise digital investments and drive real business outcomes.

DV capabilities span the entire media transaction, from pre-bid targeting through post-bid measurement and optimisation, across devices, formats and platforms. Neither DoubleVerify or OpenSlate rely on persistent tracking technologies, such as third-party cookies or mobile device IDs like Apple’s IDFA.

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