The changing face of media assurance - why wait for tomorrow when you can have it today?

"You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day." "It must come sometimes to 'jam to-day'," Alice objected.

Through The Looking Glass And What Alice Found There (Lewis Carol, 1871)

Media is accelerating into a connected world, where all advertising inventory except magazines and newspapers will be bought programmatically quite possibly through omni-channel DSPs. In this environment, advertisers and their publishing partners have a valuable new opportunity to optimise their supply-chains and an equal need to understand the black box.

However, media verification capabilities and techniques of old (manual, sample-based work done periodically) do not align well with the desired outcomes promised from digitisation and don’t take advantage of the benefits on offer. Indeed, why should they given the disruptive nature of auction-based, real-time bidding as a mechanism for striking a binding commercial agreement compared to the historic processes and norms of media buying.

While independence remains critical, the key difference between the old world approach and Fenestra’s platform flows from the benefits of automation thanks to data standardisation. IAB’s oRTB protocol enjoys near industry wide adoption and adherence to standards makes operating within the ecosystem fast and efficient. Fenestra opens up a new world of value for our partners by harnessing these new dynamics and creating the value on offer from an always-on or Continuous Auditing approach. Continuous Auditing was first proposed as a concept by Professor Miklos Vasarhelyi (1983) of AT&T Bell Labs and Rutger Business School and recently developed by Mantelaers & Zoet (2018) in to a Practical Maturity Model across 4 capability areas - Systems, Data, Organisation and People.

A comparison of a traditional auditing approach vs Fenestra

Our technology allows advertisers and their valued agency advisors to no longer fear assurance as an auditing function but see it as a critical part of optimising a campaign. Self-evidently, it is impossible to optimise if your data is untrusted or just plain wrong. Sample-based methodologies are highly exposed to this risk in particular where pool sizes are too small.

Fenestra takes the old auditing model and turbo-charges media assurance’s value from being largely a compliance tool to also directly improving campaign performance. Further, by consolidating the activities of Auditing (external activity to ensure compliance) and Monitoring (internal activity aimed at trouble-shooting) we deliver direct cost and time savings which flow back to both advertiser and their partners to invest in higher value, strategic activities.

Advertisers and agencies who undertake programmatic verification refuse to accept sub-optimal results. They are realising benefits not just in future media spend but in current, in-flight campaigns making them more efficient and competitive.

Be impatient, Be Alice … and enjoy some jam to-day!