Research Archives - Integral Ad Science

Break Through the Holiday Noise

IAS Team — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 12:00:00 +0000

How reaching consumers with contextual relevance during peak holiday moments drives performance

Holiday shopping has become a long game. By October last year, nearly 1 in 5 consumers had already started their gift lists, and by November, more than half were actively shopping. For advertisers, that means the pressure to deliver is spread across the entire quarter.

But with inflated CPMs, crowded ad environments, and opportunistic low-quality inventory, capturing consumer attention isn’t easy. Success depends on knowing when to activate and where to appear.

That’s why IAS created Break Through the Holiday Noise — a guide to help marketers navigate the busiest shopping season with confidence and control.

Inside the guide, you’ll uncover:

The key shopping window that delivered a 4.6x lift in conversions for one CPG brand
Why conversion rates are 174% higher on quality sites vs. MFA, and how to keep your spend focused on environments that drive performance
The seasonal spikes in impressions for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Cyber Week — and what they mean for campaign timing
The IAS Context Control Targeting & Avoidance segments proven to capture consumer attention across retail, travel, food, and entertainment

The holiday season only comes once a year — make every impression count.

The post Break Through the Holiday Noise appeared first on Integral Ad Science.

Power Stronger Performance on Social

IAS Team — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Learn how top advertisers are maximizing performance on social this holiday season

Social media is a high-stakes arena for advertisers. It’s where your audience spends the bulk of their time. But while the reach is undeniable, the content environment is constantly shifting. Virality, user-generated content, and platform-specific trends can change the tone of a feed in minutes — and during the holidays, the pace of change accelerates even more.

In our latest white paper, we explore how Social Optimization is helping global advertisers make their holiday campaigns more efficient, more effective, and more aligned with brand strategy. You’ll find out how top brands are taking charge of their social campaigns this holiday season with real-time suitability controls, seeing results like:

3x ROI on social media campaigns for a global telecommunications brand
48% decrease in wasted ad spend, enabling a leading insurance brand to reinvest back into suitable media
65% reduction in brand suitability fail rates, increasing performance and decreasing waste for a major retail brand

Marketers no longer have to compromise between safety and scale. Maximize your social investment and see better results during the holidays — and beyond.

Download the full white paper to find out how.

The post Power Stronger Performance on Social appeared first on Integral Ad Science.

Performance & Brand Equity in the New Media Landscape

IAS Team — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 12:00:00 +0000

How advertisers can drive performance and elevate brand reputation in a dynamic media landscape

In a digital world where unpredictability is the norm, advertisers face the constant challenge of safeguarding their brand’s reputation — but cost often gets in the way. So how can advertisers proactively protect their brands while also prioritizing cost efficiency?

Our latest white paper, Performance & Brand Equity in the New Media Landscape, is a must-read for advertisers looking to improve end-to-end campaign performance and maximize ROI. Backed by real-world case studies, this white paper is your roadmap to simultaneously driving brand equity and cost savings.

Download the white paper now to learn how to:

Leverage a proactive approach to brand safety without sacrificing scale
Reach more consumers in environments you deem safe and suitable
Boost campaign performance and cost savings with Context Control Avoidance

The post Performance & Brand Equity in the New Media Landscape appeared first on Integral Ad Science.

IAS Empowers Advertisers Across Social Media Platforms

IAS Team — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:39:44 +0000

IAS is proud to be a trusted media measurement and optimization leader across social and video platforms, the open web, CTV, and other digital channels.

Amid ongoing industry change and rapid shifts across the digital advertising industry, we’re here to support our customers to ensure their campaigns continue to maximize ROI while protecting brand equity. Across social media platforms, our solutions include:

Global Coverage Across TikTok

IAS remains a trusted partner of TikTok to offer optimization and measurement solutions globally:

IAS currently offers Total Media Quality (TMQ) for TikTok in 78+ markets globally.
IAS launched an Alpha test on TikTok for Video Exclusion List Optimization, which is expected to be generally available in 78+ markets in H1 2025.

Proactive Brand Safety and Suitability Optimization

IAS provides advertisers with tools to drive brand safety, suitability, and contextual alignment across platforms to reduce media waste and drive performance. Examples include:

First-to-market test partner for Meta Content Block Lists, launched October 2024
Exclusive IAS Optimization for X on the Vertical Video product, launched February 2024

Brand Safety and Suitability Measurement across Platforms

IAS offers Total Media Quality (TMQ) measurement which includes a combination of Brand Safety and Suitability, Viewability, and Invalid Traffic reporting to enable advertisers to validate media strategy and drive performance. TMQ is powered by best-in-class technology with daily reporting aligned to industry standards.

In addition, IAS recently announced a unique partnership with Lumen to provide Attention measurement across major social platforms and channels. The reporting can be applied retroactively to inform budget allocation between channels and provide creative insights.

If you’d like more information or have questions, please contact an IAS representative or reach out to socialsupport@integralads.com. We look forward to continuing to support you in 2025 and beyond.

The post IAS Empowers Advertisers Across Social Media Platforms appeared first on Integral Ad Science.

The 2025 Industry Pulse Report

IAS Team — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Industry experts reveal what’s next for digital media in 2025

IAS, in collaboration with YouGov, surveyed U.S. digital media experts to uncover the trends, technologies, and solutions that will drive digital advertising forward in 2025.

From shifting priorities to anticipated challenges, this year’s Industry Pulse Report offers a comprehensive look at how media experts are preparing for these shifts so you can stay ahead of the curve.

Sneak Peek: Top Priorities & Challenges for 2025

Social Media Takes the Lead: 61% of media experts place social media at the top of their list, but not without its challenges. With deepfakes becoming more common and new opportunities like social shopping emerging, advertisers will need to adapt quickly.
Digital Video Growth: 43% of respondents expect digital video to dominate formats, particularly as it becomes more intertwined with social media. This format’s rise will require attention to new media quality threats like AI-generated content.
Influencer Marketing Ramps Up: 28% of experts are prioritizing influencer campaigns to drive social purchases, but the format may face challenges due to growing pains.
Safety Concerns Persist: Advertisers continue to rank safety as a top challenge, particularly in ensuring ads do not appear alongside risky content or misinformation. Deepfakes and ad waste are also high on the list, requiring strategic planning.

Download your copy of the 2025 Industry Pulse Report now to access the industry’s most actionable insights for a stronger 2025.

The post The 2025 Industry Pulse Report appeared first on Integral Ad Science.

3 Ways to Keep Your Brand Safe on Social Media

IAS Team — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 11:00:00 +0000

How to maximize impact while ensuring brand integrity in social media advertising

Brands know that the social media landscape is rife with opportunity. With 97% of U.S. consumers actively using social media platforms, this environment offers an unparalleled opportunity to reach consumers where they spend a significant portion of their time.

The numbers speak for themselves: nearly 9-in-10 consumers have engaged with an ad on social media within the past year. This level of interaction highlights the immense potential for brands to not only reach their target audience but also to drive engagement and conversions through carefully crafted campaigns. Social media platforms also provide the unique ability to create personalized and dynamic ad experiences, allowing brands to tailor their messaging to specific consumer segments, leading to better business results.

The social media struggle

While social media platforms offer unparalleled access to a vast audience, they also present significant hurdles. The dynamic and often unpredictable nature of social media, especially during sensitive periods like election seasons, can make it difficult for advertisers to maintain control over where and how their ads are displayed.

The rise of misinformation and AI-generated content adds another layer of complexity, making it harder for advertisers to ensure that their messages are seen in a suitable, trustworthy context. In fact, consumers say misinformation is the number one type of questionable content that consumers want to avoid on their social media feeds, with AI-generated content coming in at number three. So not only can adjacency to misinformation and AI-generated content hurt a brand’s credibility, consumers also simply don’t want to come across that content.

These challenges mean that advertisers must be more vigilant than ever, carefully managing their campaigns to avoid potential pitfalls that could harm their brand. Ensuring that ads appear in brand-safe and suitable environments is no longer just an option — it’s a necessity in a landscape where consumer trust can be easily undermined by misleading or controversial content.

Why brand safety and suitability matter more than ever

Brand safety and suitability go far beyond merely avoiding inappropriate content. It’s about ensuring that your brand’s message is consistently delivered in a context that aligns with your values and resonates positively with your audience.

The stakes are high—35% of consumers hold brands responsible for ads appearing near unsafe content, underscoring the importance of careful placement. Additionally, 82% of consumers have encountered questionable content in their social media feeds that they’d prefer to avoid, highlighting the growing challenge of maintaining a safe and trustworthy brand presence online. As the volume of unsafe content on social media continues to increase, the responsibility on brands to prioritize safety will only intensify.

Failure to do so can lead to decreased consumer trust and a negative impact on your bottom line, making brand safety an essential component of any successful digital marketing strategy.

3 steps to keep your brand safe on social

1. Employ advanced AI-powered prevention solutions

Advanced AI brand safety and suitability tools are essential in the fight against misinformation and harmful content on social media. These solutions can analyze vast amounts of data in real-time, detecting and flagging content that could pose a risk to brand reputation. It’s important for advertisers to rely on the most granular brand safety and suitability technology powered by AI that can measure social media content frame-by-frame and aligned to the industry-standard 12th category for misinformation.

By integrating AI-driven brand safety and suitability tools into your strategy, you can automate the identification of unsafe content, allowing you to act swiftly and decisively before any damage is done. This proactive approach not only protects your brand but also ensures that your advertising dollars are spent in environments that won’t hurt brand performance.

2. Reallocate ad spend for optimal impact on social media

Regularly evaluating your ad spend is essential to ensure that your investments are yielding the desired results. This involves more than just monitoring basic metrics like impressions and clicks; it requires a deep dive into viewability, invalid traffic, brand safety, and brand suitability metrics.

By analyzing these factors, you can identify areas where your ads are performing well and areas that may need adjustment. For instance, if a particular platform or channel shows high levels of invalid traffic or low viewability, it may be wise to reallocate your budget to more effective environments. This not only maximizes the return on your investment but also reinforces your commitment to maintaining a safe and suitable brand presence on social media.

3. Leverage measurement and optimization platforms for custom insights

Ensuring that your ads appear in contexts that are both relevant and safe is a key component of maintaining brand integrity on social media. Measurement and optimization partners like IAS can offer in-depth analysis of ad placements, including insight on viewability, invalid traffic, and brand safety, helping you understand where your ads are appearing and how effective they may be to your intended audience. Going a step further, trusted measurement and optimization partners have the ability to provide custom brand suitability metrics and graphs tailored to your brand that allow you to take action more effectively.

Third-party measurement and optimization partners go beyond social media to help you navigate the complexities of other advertising channels, including emerging media formats like gaming, retail media, digital audio, and more, providing guidance on how to maintain brand safety and suitability across campaigns.

Safeguard and scale on social with IAS

Not all social media ads are created equal. IAS’s latest research into brand safety on social media, “The State of Social,” provides invaluable insights into how consumers’ perceptions of and interactions with brands are influenced by the content surrounding ads on social media. Understanding these preferences allows advertisers to craft campaigns that align with consumer expectations, increasing the likelihood of superior advertising results.

The conversation around social media’s influence is more critical than ever. Its ability to shape consumer perceptions, rapidly spread information, and provide unique advertising opportunities makes it an indispensable tool for modern marketers. As social media platforms continue to evolve, understanding and leveraging these changes will be essential to driving successful campaigns.

Download The State of Social to discover:

How misinformation and AI-generated content on social feeds impact ad performance
What kinds of ads consumers are interacting with on social media
What types of ad adjacencies drive purchase intent and brand awareness

The post 3 Ways to Keep Your Brand Safe on Social Media appeared first on Integral Ad Science.

RESEARCH: The Future of CTV Investment

IAS Team — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

How industry experts are evaluating the future of ad spend and media quality in CTV

As the Connected TV (CTV) landscape becomes increasingly competitive, advertisers are under pressure to do more with less. Budgets are tighter, yet the demand for impactful, high-quality campaigns continues to grow.

As CTV continues to dominate the market, IAS set out to understand how media experts plan to invest in this advertising environment in the coming years, and what role media quality plays as advertising budgets are steadily reallocated to CTV.

Access The Future of CTV Investment to learn:

Industry professionals’ top reasons for increasing ad spend on CTV
What media quality issues may be preventing further investment in CTV
How to boost brand impact on CTV

CTV is a powerhouse advertising environment — but understanding how to invest in it is key. Download the study now to find out how.

The post RESEARCH: The Future of CTV Investment appeared first on Integral Ad Science.

Why Attention Metrics are Essential for Successful Campaigns

IAS Team — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Attention is becoming one of the most important metrics in digital media

Capturing and maintaining consumer attention is more critical than ever — and traditional proxy metrics simply don’t cut it anymore. Brands are often left wondering how to catch attention in advertising, causing the concept to emerge as a vital metric among ad measurement and optimization platforms.

Attention measurement provides deeper insights into how consumers interact with ads, indicating whether the message truly resonates. Unlike engagement — which only tells part of the story — attention ad measurement gauges the quality and depth of consumer interest, making it a more accurate predictor of ad effectiveness and business results.

Why is everyone talking about attention metrics?

Understanding and measuring attention can significantly enhance advertising strategies. High attention scores correlate strongly with better campaign performance, including higher conversion rates and improved ROI. In fact, higher attention impressions have double the success rate as those with low attention. This is because when consumers pay genuine attention to an ad, they are more likely to remember the brand, understand the message, and take desired actions.

Simply put, focusing on attention helps advertisers allocate their budgets more efficiently, ensuring that their ads are not just seen, but truly noticed and acted upon.

As digital advertising continues to evolve, prioritizing attention will become increasingly important. By leveraging advanced analytics and adopting sophisticated measurement techniques, marketers can gain a comprehensive understanding of consumer attention.

May we have your attention, please?

Here are four steps to drive higher attention in your campaigns today.

1. Focus on visibility for higher engagement and attention

Visibility plays a crucial role in driving attention, as highly viewable environments enhance the likelihood of engaging and retaining audiences. After all, how can an unviewable ad be expected to drive any attention at all?

Visibility metrics, which include viewability, video quartile measurement, and time-in-view, serve as a baseline to provide a clear picture of attention. Without insight into these metrics, advertisers risk wasting valuable ad spend on inventory that isn’t even seen.

Premium media placements, verified against visibility metrics, ensure that ads are seen and provide insight into how long, giving advertisers the opportunity to allocate ad spend where it really makes an impact.

2. Know your ad’s environment

Ever noticed an ad that really stood out on a webpage? Environment can make or break a campaign’s performance. For example, an ad presented on a page with a high ad density (meaning there are lots of ads on the page) is competing for attention from banner after banner and video after video, making it nearly impossible to garner high, impactful attention.

With insight into the environment in which an ad is served, advertisers can reallocate ad dollars toward sites that offer lower ad densities, improved shares of screen, and device formats and types that perform better. Advertisers who try to garner attention without insight into where the ad is served will learn the hard way that environment is everything — and there are ways to garner attention without fighting for it.

3. Understand how consumers are interacting with your advertising

Are consumers skipping your ad? Turning the volume up or down? These insights, along with other interaction metrics, provide insight into attention that can inform placement, creative, where to invest your ad spend, and more.

All of the above insights are incredibly important indicators of attention, but the most advanced attention measurement goes a step further: enter eye-tracking. Eye-tracking data shows exactly where a consumer’s gaze and fixation is on a given webpage, providing invaluable data that IAS maps back to our attention product. Relying on a measurement and optimization partner whose attention model is informed by eye-tracking is an even more powerful way to optimize toward higher attention.

The bottom line? Don’t settle for attention measurement that can’t give you the most accurate picture of attention.

4. Drive superior results with actionable attention data

The solution isn’t more data — it’s more actionable data. Harnessing the power of data can significantly enhance your ability to drive higher attention. By analyzing attention metrics, you can gain a deeper understanding of what works and what doesn’t in your campaigns. This information allows you to make informed decisions and optimize your strategies for better results.

Quality Attention allows you to drive superior results by:

Reducing media waste: Measure the impact of your ads and adjust media spend to improve performance across the marketing funnel
Boosting awareness: Amplify your messaging with higher quality placements
Driving consideration: Understand where to show your ads to improve brand affinity
Increasing conversions: Act on low performing campaigns, media partners, placements, domains, and more to improve attention

Start measuring attention today with IAS

Nearly eight-in-10 marketers who measured attention in 2023 say their company is ready to optimize towards the metric this year. Though it stands as one of the most precise indicators of an ad’s resonance with consumers and its potential to drive business results, it often remains elusive and challenging to quantify.

Stop guessing and start driving results. Learn everything you need to know about capturing attention effectively.

Download Taking Action on Attention: Volume II to:

Understand how attention metrics offer unique insights compared to traditional engagement measures
See the impact of Quality AttentionTM on conversion rates
Gain a deeper understanding of how consumers interact with ads and what captures their attention
Learn practical strategies to enhance your ad campaigns using attention metrics

The post Why Attention Metrics are Essential for Successful Campaigns appeared first on Integral Ad Science.

RESEARCH: The Mind on The Stream

IAS Team — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0000

A neuro-investigation into the brain while watching CTV ads

Connected TV (CTV) has revolutionized how we watch and monetize television. With the freedom to watch on demand and the power of precise targeting and placement, both consumers and advertisers have been presented with unprecedented opportunities. Yet, many viewers still face frustration from irrelevant and disruptive ads that detract from their viewing experience.

In the search for best practices that drive performance and satisfy audiences, IAS and Neuro-Insight embarked on a groundbreaking neurostudy. This pioneering research dives deep into viewers’ brains to uncover how tone, context, and frequency influence CTV ad effectiveness.

Here’s a quick look at what we discovered:

Unrelated ads break viewers’ neuro-state: Ads that don’t align with the content disrupt viewers’ engagement, reducing their impact.
Repeated ad viewing leads to higher connection, but lower interest: While repetition builds recognition, it can also diminish excitement.
Context-matched ads are highly memorable to viewers: Ads that fit seamlessly within the content are more likely to stick with your audience.

Surveys provide a glimpse, but brain activity reveals the full story. Discover how to enhance brand impact and forge the future of CTV advertising with insights straight from the mind.

The post RESEARCH: The Mind on The Stream appeared first on Integral Ad Science.

RESEARCH: The State of Social

IAS Team — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Safeguarding and scaling your brand on social media

The ubiquity of social media gives advertisers an opportunity to cast a wide net for their brands. However, the varied nature of social media feeds, especially during election season, presents a challenge in ensuring the content surrounding ads is safe. Amid the spread of misinformation and AI-generated content, consumers are increasingly discerning — and advertisers should take note.

Leverage this study to understand how consumers’ perceptions of and interactions with brands are influenced by content surrounding ads on social media. Plus, this research deep dives into the types of ads that consumers are more likely to remember and consider favorable within social feeds.

Download The State of Social to find out:

How misinformation and AI-generated content on social feeds impacts ad performance
What kinds of ads consumers are interacting with on social media
What types of ad adjacencies drive purchase intent and brand awareness

The post RESEARCH: The State of Social appeared first on Integral Ad Science.