IAS’S ANNUAL MEDIA QUALITY REPORT FINDS OVERALL GLOBAL BRAND RISK REMAINS STABLE, BUT NEW CHALLENGES LIE AHEAD By Investing.com

Marketers Focused on Navigating Threats from the Rise in AI-Generated Deepfakes and Misinformation

NEW YORK, May 7, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Integral Ad Science (Nasdaq: IAS), a leading global media measurement and optimization platform, today released its highly anticipated 19th edition of its Media Quality Report (MQR). The annual report analyzes over 280 billion digital interactions daily from across the globe to provide both advertisers and publishers with benchmarks to measure the quality of their digital advertising campaigns and inventory.

The report found that marketers are focused on safeguarding their brands from growing threats including AI-generated deepfakes and misinformation and that consumers increasingly hold advertisers accountable for ad placements around risky content, which can lead to lower levels of brand favorability and trust. In addition, with the shift to video-first environments, industry experts see social media and digital video as the top two media types to face serious challenges in 2024, and also the two that are most ripe for innovation.

“IAS is committed to driving our mission forward as the benchmark for trust and transparency in digital media quality, and the MQR is just one of the many ways we pursue this mission for advertisers, publishers, and platforms across the globe,” said Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS. “The findings of the report highlight the need for innovative solutions to help marketers, publishers, and platforms safeguard and scale their brands now more than ever, all while improving ROI to remain future-ready.”

This year’s report found the global brand risk rate remained stable in 2023,  coming down a nominal 0.1 point from 2022 to reach 1.7%.  However, brand risk increased 0.2 points in the Americas from 2022 to 2023, up from 1.9% to a 2.1% brand risk average “ likely a result of increased election coverage and political ad spending. Video, both desktop and mobile, continued to see low brand risk worldwide. Despite sitting at a brand risk rate of 7.0% in 2020, desktop video carried the lowest brand risk of any format at 1.4% in 2023, with mobile video sitting slightly higher at 1.7%.

With the Olympic Games and UEFA European Championship to come this year, IAS discovered a correlation with major sporting events and higher brand risk. In the U.S., a brand risk average of 3.5% in the week leading up to the Super Bowl in February 2023 was 59% higher than the 2.2% benchmark for the U.S.

Despite the significant…