Programmatic ad spend is growing at a breakneck pace, but with that growth has come increased scrutiny on the digital inventory available, and the legitimacy of traffic, creating an uneasy relationship between buyers and sellers.

ComScore says those trust issues are holding back the marketplace, and it is launching a new program that aims to combat the issues of verification, viewability and non-human traffic.

Today the measurement company announced it is rolling out the comScore Industry Trust, a multi-phase program that aims to enable trusted transactions between buyers and sellers. The program is rolling out in the U.S. today, and is expected to come online in Canada by mid-February or March.

The comScore initiative will focus on providing an independent rating of ad inventory quality and activating quality inventory across both programmatic trading and traditional media planning.

Brent Bernie, president at comScore Canada, says the measurement company is using its role as a third-party industry organization to try and swing the pendulum back from the negative commentary that has been surrounding the programmatic space in recent months.

“It hasn’t been good for the industry, and has raised some questions that weren’t positive,” he says. “This initiative will help to solve that and have the clients start to bring the money back. Today the exchange marketplace is about the presence of cookie and price, but we want it to be about quality inventory.”

The initiative goes live in the U.S. today with the launch of Trust Profiles, a collection of comScore advertising metrics such as non-human traffic certifications, top property rankings, viewability and demographic statistics. Those metrics are available in programmatic trading platforms, with MediaMath, Turn, The Trade Desk, Rubicon Project and Eyereturn Marketing as the first partners to have the new metrics. They will be added to other companies throughout 2015, and will also be made available in additional programmatic buying and selling platforms.

Starting today publishers who are clients of comScore will be able to privately view their own Trust Profiles. Publishers will have access to an exclusive view of how their sites are being represented on programmatic platforms, and will also be able to ask questions, understand where the measures come from and manage their inventory definitions.

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