comScore, Nielsen and Integral to Verify Facebook Ads

Facebook has three new partners verifying metrics on viewings of its photo and video ads: comScore, Nielsen and Integral Ad Science. The firms will start verifying ad viewability and attention metrics 'in the next few months'.

In the announcement, the social network said it was 'committed to supplying marketers with data that they trust'. Last September it agreed a video ad verification partnership with New York-based web analytics company Moat, which has itself partnered with Nielsen in the recent past as well as announcing a massive new injection of funds.

Nielsen SVP of Product Leadership David Wong said the company was 'thrilled to work with Facebook to bring high-quality independent measurement of viewability to the marketplace through our Digital Ad Ratings service', while comScore's Chief Product Officer Manish Bhatia said such partnerships 'encourage greater trust between buyers and sellers and contribute to enhancing the overall value of digital advertising'. Integral CEO Scott Knoll commented: 'Social has become an important advertising platform for brands to tell their stories, and Integral is proud to partner with Facebook to offer advertisers the opportunity to measure exactly how their campaigns are performing'.

In January, Nielsen expanded what was previously known as Twitter TV Ratings to include Facebook conversations, renaming the service 'Social Content Ratings'.

While a number of its partners have won accreditation from the MRC for their viewability measures, Facebook itself uses a different definition to the IAB and MRC, who require half or more of an ad to be in view for one second or more.

The three new partners are online at www.comscore.com , www.nielsen.com and www.integralads.com .