• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, December 8, 2016

Ad-tech firm Integral Ad Science (IAS) on Thursday announced it will offer an open-source mobile verification software development kit (SDK) for media quality measurement. Through the SDK, which will launch in early 2017, publishers will be able to measure their mobile inventory without having to integrate multiple SDKs from various partners.

IAS worked on the SDK with support from Ansible, Google, InMobi, Lenovo, the Media Rating Council (MRC), and other firms. The goal is to bring more transparency and interoperability for mobile viewability measurement to publishers, marketers, and agencies.

“The marketing and advertising industries have faced challenges around fragmentation of not only media and devices, but also a lack of standards around infrastructure,” stated Scott Knoll, CEO, IAS. He said IAS is using an open source approach to make things more efficient for publishers and developers to “implement, integrate, and ship code.”

Knoll stated that the approach “cuts years off for advertisers to be able to measure viewability on 100% of their mobile campaigns, compared to the small percent they are currently able to measure.”

“The MRC's Mobile Viewable Impression Measurement Guidelines recognized the challenges associated with the use of SDKs for mobile viewability measurement, and encouraged the development of an open source standard SDK by the industry for this purpose,” stated George W. Ivie, executive director and CEO of the MRC.

“Open-source standards for mobile viewability foster an easier integration process between publishers and measurement partners, while enabling buyers access to high quality, viewable mobile inventory,” stated David Danziger, The Trade Desk's VP of data partnerships.