News publishers are fed up with verification firms intervening in their ability to earn programmatic advertising revenue.
While media buyers recognize the situation is imperfect, buying programmatically without the assurance of a third-party verification firm isn’t plausible, particularly in the open marketplace.
Even in private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed deals, buyers are hesitant to rely solely on what publishers say regarding their content’s brand safety.

…

For other media buyers, the news category “requires special attention” and having a strong relationship with a specific publisher can make PMP and PG deals based on in-house verification data more appealing.

“With the news, it’s more about credibility and transparency of the news publisher. We know exactly where we’re going to be [and because of that] maybe we [will] adjust our brand safety and suitability settings,” said Molly Schultz, svp and group partner of digital investment and innovation at UM Worldwide. “If you have the ability and the resources within your team and the publisher is willing to have that conversation, I do think there’s a scenario where you can potentially even get away from using brand safety tags and rely on your direct work with those partners.”

Read more on Digiday.