Elon Musk’s X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has received an apology from brand safety measurement rating firm DoubleVerify (DV). As per DV, it had discovered a graphical error in X’s Brand safety Rate in its Pinnacle dashboard that resulted in the social media platform being listed with a lower score than intended. X’s erroneous data was displayed to advertisers for several months.
DV noted that from October 24, 2023, to March 14, 2024, its Pinnacle dashboard displayed incorrect brand safety data to advertisers. As noted in a Variety report, in some cases, X’s scores were displayed to be as low as 70%, despite the platform’s actual scores being 99.99%. This error likely caused X quite a good number of advertisers.
DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski addressed the issue in a letter to the company’s clients. In the letter, Zagorski noted that the error has been fixed. He also noted that DoubleVerify is taking full responsibility for the misreported X data.
X’s Brand Safety Rate exceeds 99% according to third-party analysis from DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science.
— Business (@XBusiness) April 12, 2024
DoubleVerify, a company responsible for providing Brand Safety measurements to major advertisers, has been displaying an erroneous graphical error of X's Brand Safety…
Valued DV Customer:
DoubleVerify recently discovered a graphical error in the display of X’s Brand Safety Rate in DV’s Pinnacle dashboard that resulted in displaying an incorrect, lower rate. Specifically, Double Verify’s dashboard incorrectly mirrored the Brand Suitability Rate for your campaign onto the Brand Safety Rate in the summary graphic in Pinnacle. The underlying data available in DV Pinnacle was accurate; only the graphical visualization was not representative of the Brand Safety Rate. This display error occurred over four and a half months from October 24, 2023 to March 14th, 2024, when it was corrected by DV. All current and retroactive Brand Safety data for X is now correctly represented in Pinnacle. The display error was not present in any other area in the Ul, including the Incident Reporting and the Rollover Data Detail.
Based on DoubleVerify’s metrics, X’s Brand Safety Rate across all campaigns we measured exceeded 99.99% from October 2023 to the present. This means that X’s Brand Safety Rate exceeds global benchmarks for brand safety, based on DV’s global industry data.
Double Verify takes measurement accuracy and reporting seriously. We take full responsibility for the inaccurate visual representation of X’s Brand Safety Rate within our dashboard that displayed an inaccurate and lower Brand Safety Rate.
We apologize for any confusion this may have caused to X and to our customers in the course of reviewing your campaign performance on X. DV remains committed to maintaining the highest standards of accuracy and transparency in our data.
Double Verify is working closely with X to ensure that all future reports reflect the accurate Brand Safety performance of campaigns run on X’s platform. We also are conducting a thorough review of our processes and systems to ensure this issue does not occur in the future.
Should you wish to have a direct conversation with X regarding your reporting, we would be happy to relay your contact information to your X account lead and facilitate a meeting. Our team at Double Verify remains committed to maintaining trust and confidence in our platform, and would welcome a direct follow up with you should you wish to discuss further.
Best regards,
Mark Zagorski
CEO DoubleVerify
X owner Elon Musk expressed his appreciation to the brand safety firm’s cooperation into the matter. As noted by Musk, X’s brand safety is actually very good if measured correctly. “Thank you DoubleVerify for correcting your mistake regarding brand safety on this platform. When measured accurately, brand safety on 𝕏 is extremely good,” Musk wrote.
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