How A Commitment to Trust Earned Us Straight A’s

Carl Kalapesi Chief Operating Officer

On Monday, Pixalate, a global ad fraud intelligence and marketing compliance platform, announced the results of its first-ever Connected TV/OTT Seller Trust Index (CSTI), a ranking on the overall quality of programmatic sellers across Roku, Amazon, and Samsung.

We are proud to share that according to the findings, FreeWheel went home with top grades. In fact, as MediaPost pointed out, FreeWheel was the only supplier to earn an “A” grade on all three Connected TV (CTV) platforms.

Pixalate developed the ranking by analyzing overall traffic quality based on factors including Household Reach, Channel Share, Transparency, and Channel Integrity. They said that they developed the rankings because they saw a need to bring greater transparency and accountability to the programmatic advertising supply chain. We couldn’t agree more.

FreeWheel has had a long and dedicated focus on maintaining high standards and building trust with both buyers and sellers. We believe four key philosophies have helped us achieve our “A” ratings, and helped us become a leader in the CTV ecosystem today:

1. A Commitment to Premium
   For years, we have talked about our belief in the power of premium. We hold all supply that comes through our systems to high standards, vetting inventory for quality and safety. In our minds, truly premium video inventory is different. It is more likely than not 100% viewable, and is often watched on the big screen in a lean-back experience. As advertisers today begin to raise concerns about the brand safety and content quality of social media channels and their adjacency to hate speech and other concerning content, we can confidently say that Freewheel has always protected our commitment to “premium,” and thereby protected our commitment to buyers and sellers.
2. Getting Ahead of Ad Fraud
   Ad fraud is certainly not a new problem in digital, but it has been constantly evolving over the past few years. We have come to accept that ad fraud will never disappear completely, and that combatting fraud is a minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day process. We understand that increased focus on ad fraud is paramount for both buyers and sellers. For this reason, we have placed strict focus on weeding out suspicious inventory through rigorous, constant monitoring and high standards and third party partnerships. By recognizing how ad fraud fits into the picture, rather than denying its existence, we are dedicated to cutting fraudulent inventory off at the source.
3. Teaming Up with the Right Partners
   Premium video requires an extra level of inventory quality assurance, and we have acknowledged we can’t always go it alone. So, we partner with other industry leaders to root out the problems that are unavoidable, including IVT measurement and verification providers. We also recently announced that we have expanded our partnership with White Ops to include pre-bid bot protection capabilities, ensuring that our clients can continue to detect, report on, and eliminate fraud in their supply chain immediately.
4. A Willingness to Say “No”
   Finally, at FreeWheel, we have always been willing to say “no” when the wrong opportunities come up. We constantly monitor inventory using established industry frameworks for non-brand suitable categories, and vetting new inventory supplies by reviewing the actual content. If content is low grade or doesn’t fit our definition of “premium” (such as hate speech or pirated content), it will get rejected. At FreeWheel, we prioritize the long-term quality of our product over immediate revenue because we know that if advertisers can’t trust our inventory, they can’t trust us.

Trust and transparency have always been key tenets for our team at FreeWheel, and the Pixalate study has shown that by focusing on the areas above, we can deliver reliable, premium supply for our clients and earn the high Trust rankings that are so important for our clients.

As the industry has become more complex, we have evolved our approach to inventory quality, trust, and standards, and it has served us well. We will continue to double and triple down on our dedication to premium, so we can keep showing our clients why we are “A” students.