• by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, November 1, 2016

InMobi, an ad-tech firm that helps consumers discover new products and services by offering personalized ads on mobile devices, has been fairly active lately.  The company -- which captures and uses real-time mobile analytics from about 1.5 billion unique mobile devices to identify insights like the best time of day to serve an ad, or the best format to achieve a rendered ad (not simply a served ad) -- has doubled down on viewability.

For example, last week InMobi announced that it partnered with Moat, an SaaS analytics firm, to offer brand advertisers mobile video measurement through both the InMobi Exchange and the InMobi network. The deal will enable advertisers to measure "human, viewable, and audible" (sound, sight, and motion) viewability and attention metrics across all mobile ad formats including mobile video and native advertising. It will also be able to transact these metrics using Moat Currency. The Moat partnership enables InMobi advertisers to transact on viewable, in-app impressions across video, interstitial, and banner ad formats via Moat’s Media Rating Council-accredited measurement.

For InMobi, until the Moat partnership, there was no viewability solution for in-app video—the company was unable to measure it. What the Moat relationship means is that “any buyer who works with Moat that wants to verify that the videos we’re running for them are viewable, can buy through the InMobi Exchange and receive reports on what Moat deems viewable,” said Kayla Wilson, head of programmatic partnerships, InMobi. “It opens up more demand and a greater sense of comfort for buyers that what they’re buying is actually being viewed by a human being.”

Wilson said that the most frequent question she receives from clients is “Do you have Moat and Integral Ad Science for viewability metrics for in-app video?” InMobi clients want reports on how many of the impressions were deemed viewable according to Moat’s solution by human beings.

Moat has more than 10 different definitions that it measures viewability against. And every agency and client has a different definition of viewability, or what’s a viewable impression for in-app video, according to Wilson. “We have to have an open dialogue and know upfront from each client what their definition of viewability is according to Moat.”

Earlier, InMobi announced a partnership with DoubleVerify that will ensure that banner and interstitial inventory is viewable and it can be tracked and verified by a third party.

InMobi has a number of developments in play. “Our biggest growth is with video, primarily in the private marketplace (PMP) vs. the open exchange,” Wilson said. She attributes the growth in PMP deals for video to the fact that InMobi is offering guarantees that advertisers will get at least 80% completion rates for in-app video. That means that viewers will complete  the entire duration of a 15- to 30-second video. Wilson reported strong adoption for the offering.

“With Moat, we’ll now have highly viewable packages, and we can guarantee advertisers will get highly viewable rate,” Wilson added. “We will offer high completion rates but also highly viewable rates, reinforcing that humans are watching the brand’s message to the end.”

According to Strategy Analytics, worldwide revenue from mobile video will reach $25 billion by 2021. As advertisers shift their digital ad dollars to video, ad viewability is an increasing priority for advertisers.

Everyone knows that viewability is top-of-mind for advertisers that want their ads to be seen by humans and they want reporting and analytics that confirm this. Not surprisingly, advertisers will continue to look for better ways to measure in-app video and transact on the right currency. Advertisers have been skittish about spending more on mobile video without independently verified metrics.