MediaMath launches Curated Market aimed at guaranteeing brand-safe programmatic

Talk about timing. MediaMath has unveiled a marketplace product that guarantees brand-safe placements just as brand safety has become the operating buzzword in the wake of concerns about fake news and Google’s troubles with ads appearing on unsavory content.

The marketplace, called Curated Market, has been in the works since last fall, and 70 percent of MediaMath clients — some 7,000 advertisers — are already signed on. The marketplace incorporates inventory from 500 publishers and hooks up to MediaMath’s DMP to make addressable audiences available for targeting on participating publishers, exchanges and SSPs. Those supply partners give Curated Market advertisers priority to target advertisers’ desired audiences.

In addition to proprietary filtering tools, the marketplace has integrations with Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify and Peer39 to facilitate brand-safety filtering. It also excludes user-generated content where the publisher does not support content monitoring, verification and blocking. And impressions are only targeted on transparent, validated URLs. The marketplace also excludes sites and content promoting illegal activity, hateful or distasteful language.

If impressions happen to be served on unsafe inventory, advertisers get a full refund at the publisher level.

During beta testing, one US retailer saw 50 percent lower CPA and 3x improvement in response rate compared to its open auction buys, and an internet television provider saw a 40 percent increase in unique reach and a 12 percent increase in conversions versus open auction, according to MediaMath.

“The Curated Market is a set of hand-picked supply sources that meet the MediaMath criteria of premium publishers. Using a mix of machine-driven data and human oversight, we’ve built a unique set of premium publishers specifically to drive incremental access to audiences our clients want to reach,” Julia Welch, VP of Product of MediaMath, told MarTech Today. “It represents a major difference in how private deals are sourced. In the past, advertisers would have to go directly to individual publishers and strike a deal. This system was inefficient and unscalable. Now, publishers can access audience-powered, brand-safe inventory in a market environment.”

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

As Third Door Media's paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.