GumGum achieved the Media Rating Council (MRC) first accreditation for measurement of content-level analysis and URL reporting for connected television (CTV). This rating is for ads that serve through the Verity API, which supports the pre-bid contextual-targeting platform.

The company plans to make the announcement on Thursday. GumGum also has accreditations for desktop and mobile.

“The MRC has looked at our methodology and proprietary tech, and gives GumGum the stamp of approval in the way in which we analyze and understand CTV content,” says Phil Schraeder, chief executive officer at GumGum, a global digital advertising platform, which focuses on contextual advertising.

U.S. CTV ad spend is expected to reach $26.92 billion in 2023 — rising to $31.77 billion in 2024, according to Insider Intelligence.

GumGum works with many brands that require accreditation. Since last year, the company has seen nearly a 300% increase in data use from Verity.  

“Our hope is that the accreditation pushes the industry forward,” Schraeder said. “It defends our thesis that transparency and trust are critical for brands to feel safe reaching audiences with their message.”

Traditional pre-roll and mid-roll ads run in CTV content.

In many cases on linear, the brands running ad know where they appear in specific content. On CTV, brands run off the same methodology, but don’t realize the ads run up against undesirable content like an aggressive murder.

Content is mislabeled, but GumGum plans to ease the challenge. “There’s a misconception that meta data is good enough,” Schraeder said. “Brands and agencies need to wake up and understand that just a heading and a description isn’t enough.”

Schraeder said the company will leverage this knowledge to launch a new ad format into the advertising market through the in-video format. The platform will have the ability in CTV content to analyze and understand the frame to load an overlay ad.

Schraeder said that brands will have an option to overlay an ad on frames such as when Forrest Gump sits on a park bench and offers a chocolate to the woman sitting next to him.

“Isn’t that a great opportunity for an ad like candy maker Sees to pop up?” Schraeder said.  

Lane Schechter, director of product at Verity for GumGum, said the technology in real time analyzes the video stream, pairs it with the audio track, and runs through the content frame by frame. It breaks down the content second by second and provides the data to partners and advertisers, so they can choose to align or void specific moments, or the entire content stream.

“We have always put a focus on developing computer vision and natural languages produces models to apply to different models,” Schechter said, explaining that the latest MRC accreditation took about three years to prove and validate the methodology. “Now we have expanded it to the video space … and CTV.”

GumGum also plans to expand on its contextual focus into emerging digital environments. The company is now active in gaming and will look into how to apply content-level support.