• by Felicia Greiff , Staff Writer, January 14, 2016

Open ad management company Sizmek

Sizmek, which recently announced partnerships with Tapad and Screen6, has been accredited by the MRC for its measurement of served ad impressions and clicks on mobile Web and mobile apps.* The accreditation covers display, rich media and videos and builds on its previous MRC accreditations for ad delivery and viewability on desktop. 

What does all this mean for clients? Zach Moore, VP of ad operations at Centro (a partner of Sizmek) explains below in a lightly edited and condensed conversation. 

Real-Time Daily: Why, as a client of Sizmek, is its MRC accreditation important to Centro?

Zach Moore: With mobile being such a major component of most of our campaigns, (and Sizmek being our ad-serving partner) it’s really critical for us to be able to have the highest level of confidence possible with mobile web and in-app data: two areas in which one or both always seem to be relegated to the disclaimer section of every vendor deck that we see. This ‘hope for the best’ with mobile performance data just does not fly anymore. Sizmek standing behind their measurement for mobile is something we hope to see all vendors follow suit on.

Could you talk about your approach to measuring a campaign's success? (Are you usually skeptical or careful with results?)

Moore: Generally, we’re cautious before we actually deliver results to a client. Our analytical solutions team puts a substantial amount of time and effort into understanding counting methodologies, points of failure, data storage, technical limitations, etc. before they propose a data or measurement solution to our media strategy teams. We really think it’s important for us to completely dissect a solution right off the bat, and not just tack on another pixel and wait to be delivered pretty charts and graphs that we can’t explain the mechanics behind.

Does the accreditation add legitimacy, in your opinion?
Moore: I think it does in some regards. While not being MRC-accredited definitely doesn’t disqualify a solution outright, it just says to me that a solutions provider has reached a level of maturity with their offering, where they really have no concerns with anyone poking around under the hood. We’re all for accuracy and transparency whenever we can get it, especially for mobile. 

We’ve got a really tight API integration with Sizmek for Centro’s media planning app, Centro Direct. We’re really excited to see mobile metrics gain more validity and traction all the time, so we can pipe them through directly to our agency users with even more confidence.

*The MRC stressed that the accreditation concerns served impressions and not viewable impressions. Sizmek is accredited for desktop viewable display impressions, and in the process, not accredited for desktop viewable video impressions, a representative from the MRC said in an email.