• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, May 18, 2016

Global audience technology firm YuMe on Wednesday debuted new capabilities that it says will improve brand safety and viewability for YuMe for Advertisers (YFA), its programmatic video advertising platform.

The enhancement offers YFA customers the option of using YuMe’s native pre-bid brand safety solution alongside Integral Ad Science's Integral Bid Expert technology to protect their programmatic ad buys.

"Video continues to be front and center for digital advertisers, and not all video ads are equal in quality. We're excited to partner with YuMe to make it easier for advertisers to purchase viewable, brand-safe, fraud-free video inventory,” Harmon Lyons, VP business development, Integral Ad Science, told Real-Time Daily via email.

In aggregate, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, fraudulent impressions, infringed content, and malvertising costs the U.S. digital marketing, advertising, and media industry $8.2 billion annually. Ad fraud accounts for the largest portion of costs, at a total of $4.6 billion.

According to the Association of National Advertisers, $7.2 billion is expected to be lost globally as a result of nonhuman traffic in 2016.  In particular programmatic video had 73% more bots than the study's overall average.

“To protect your home against unwanted, suspicious activity, the first thing you do is lock the front door,” said Venkat Krishnan, SVP of product, YuMe, via email. “Our pre-emptive safeguard technology works to block impressions that don’t meet minimum viewability thresholds and non-human traffic at the periphery. Our pre-bid solution, which sits side by side with Integral’s capabilities, further ensures campaigns meet their viewability. This double-door protection is an alternative, sophisticated solution to the marketplace.”