YouTube to limit all third-party verification pixels starting in 2020

Google this week announced that it will limit the pixels on YouTube. Nielsen, Comscore, DoubleVerify, Dynata, Kantar and Integral Ad Science will lose direct access to measure YouTube ads. These ad measurement companies were allowed to measure directly the YouTube Ads, but will now have to use Ads Data Hub, early next year. Google will scrap all third-party pixels on YouTube, starting early next year.

Nithya Sowrirajan, Director, Global Brand Measurement, at Google, says that “pixels played an important role across the web for over a decade, but pixels were built for a world of single screens, not for the ways many people watch YouTube today.” Nithya Sowrirajan also says that “more than 70 percent of time spent watching YouTube globally occurs on mobile devices, and pixels can’t report on the effectiveness of ads that appear in mobile apps.”

Trough Ads Data Hub, Google sends the data to measurement companies, protecting the privacy of the users, as it aggregates all data. Unlike pixel-based measurement, companies can’t do the measure themselves. Google says that Ads Data Hub allows advertisers to understand the effectiveness of their ads in a secure, privacy-safe environment, like in Google Ads or DV360.

Due to GDPR, Google removed all PII (Personally Identifiable Information) from the data transfer on AdX, DCM and DBM, and created the Ads Data Hub.

Companies connected with Ads Data Hub

• Adform
• C3 Metrics
• Extreme Reach
• Flashtalking
• Gemius
• Innovid
• Meetrics
• Sizmek
• Weborama