Streaming TV may be booming, but the ad tech behind it hasn’t fully caught up. DoubleVerify (DV), long known for policing media quality and verifying campaign outcomes, is rolling out a suite of industry-first streaming TV products that promise the kind of transparency advertisers have been begging for.
The headline issue: huge portions of “CTV” impressions aren’t actually CTV at all. DV’s own research estimates that 15% of U.S. programmatic direct, PG, and PMP CTV deals serve outside true streaming video environments, landing instead in gaming apps, music players, or utility apps—wasting more than $1 billion per quarter.
The fix, according to DV, is a new stack of products:
- Verified Streaming TV™ pre-bid segments and measurement, and
- “Do Not Air” Automation, built into DV’s Authentic Brand Suitability suite.
And in a notable twist, DV is supercharging its AI classification system using licensed IMDb data, giving the company access to some of the most authoritative contextual metadata in entertainment.
The New Reality: Streaming Needs Better Guardrails
Advertisers want to avoid low-quality environments and keep ads from appearing alongside content that conflicts with their brand values. But with the rise of resold inventory and programmatic complexity, the path from budget to placement has become murky.
“Streaming TV grows, but challenges grow with it,” said Todd Randak, GM of CTV at DV. “Opaque placements, resold inventory, and manual processes cost advertisers billions. Our new products are designed to solve exactly that.”
DV’s pitch is simple: if streaming is going to compete with the scale and quality of linear TV budgets, it needs just as much rigor—if not more.
Verified Streaming TV: Pre-Bid, TV-Like Quality Assurance
DV’s new Verified Streaming TV solution brings pre-bid classification to streaming content, powered by DV’s AI-driven content intelligence. It’s the first product on the market offering advertisers a way to confirm—before bidding—that their ads will appear in genuine, premium streaming video players.
With Verified Streaming TV, advertisers can:
- Ensure impressions run in premium streaming TV environments across platforms such as The Trade Desk, Teads, StackAdapt, Microsoft Invest, and Index Exchange
- Verify ads appear in branded players, not extension networks or repackaged inventory
- Measure scale, quality, and placement accuracy
- Prevent overspending on non-TV inventory that sneaks into CTV buys
It’s essentially a truth serum for CTV supply paths: trust, but verify.
“Do Not Air” Automation: Ending the Spreadsheet Era
Advertisers have long depended on “Do Not Air” lists—manual, spreadsheet-heavy policies defining where ads must not appear. But in today’s programmatic world, that approach is as outdated as buying TV spots by fax.
DV’s new “Do Not Air” Automation, integrated into Authentic Brand Suitability, replaces the manual process with AI-driven automation.
Advertisers can now:
- Eliminate manual list tracking
- Apply precise rules based on DV’s normalized genre and maturity data
- Activate their settings at the point of transaction using a single segment ID
- Automatically enforce restrictions across streaming environments
The product rolls out first via The Trade Desk, with more platforms coming soon.
For advertisers constantly struggling with misaligned or unsafe placements, this is a serious workflow upgrade.
Bringing IMDb Data Into the Picture
One of the more intriguing pieces of this announcement is DV’s decision to license IMDb’s extensive content metadata, including Parents Guides, Ratings, and popularity signals. That gives DV a powerful new dataset to refine contextual classification for streaming TV.
IMDb CEO Nikki Santoro notes that authoritative data from the platform’s more than 250 million monthly visitors already fuels advanced analytics globally. For DV, this partnership means sharper contextual insights and more accurate content signals as it rolls out its next wave of products in early 2026.
David Goddard, DV’s SVP of Business Development, framed it this way: “As streaming matures, media quality gets more complex. IMDb’s data strengthens the signals we need to classify content with precision.”
A Needed Step Toward Fixing CTV’s Accountability Gap
DV’s expanded tools are part of its Media AdVantage Platform, which blends media verification, optimization, and outcome measurement. But the real goal is bigger: make streaming TV as accountable, measurable, and brand-safe as traditional TV—without losing digital flexibility.
As Dave Morgan, Founder and CEO of Simulmedia, put it: “Transparency in streaming has never been more critical…Offerings like Verified Streaming TV give the market the clarity and control it’s been missing.”
With billions in CTV budgets now at stake, DV is positioning itself as the standard-bearer for quality in an industry struggling to police itself.
