This is weird.

Today, ad measurement platform DoubleVerify has issued an apology to X for mistakenly reporting its brand safety measurement information for months within its client dashboard, potentially affecting ad spend in the app.

As Variety reported:

"From Oct. 24, 2023, through March 14, 2024, DoubleVerify's dashboard gave the wrong data to advertisers for X. At times, the measurement firm came back with scores as low as 70%, when in fact X's Brand Safety Rates were 99.99%. "

In a conciliatory note sent to subscribers, DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski said the company's dashboard is now correctly reflecting X's brand-safety rates, per Variety.

X's Head of America's Monique Pintarelli has said that this mistake was only a problem for X, but it didn't affect any other platform and, according to the above, has now been fixed to show X's real, proper brand safety score.

Which, naturally, stands at 99.99%.

Which, as I've noted before, is staggeringly high, especially in light of all these reports indicating X has hosted and/or amplified more hate speech under Elon Musk. That being said, that's what X and DoubleVerify are doing with it, with DV's additional placement and measurement solutions apparently sufficient to ensure safe brand placement based on these measurements.

So why was DoubleVerify's dashboard wrong for months, and can you rely on any of their data as a result?

The company said the mistake was really only in the "graphical visualization" of X's brand safety data within its "Pinnacle" dashboard; the underlying data feed was correct.

But that, curiously, suggests that the dashboard itself wasn't even fed from a feed of data from X. So D.V. was displaying it whatever graphic it wanted?

Pretty weird.

In any case, DoubleVerify says it is double-checking its systems.

DoubleVerify is working very closely with X to ensure that all future reports will accurately reflect the campaign's true Brand Safety performance in running on X's platform. We are also carefully reviewing our processes and systems to ensure this cannot happen in the future.

I don't know, it all seems slightly weird, and doesn't fill me with confidence regarding D.V.'s listings.

True, but we only know what they let us in on, and currently, they are assuring all the X ad partners that their ad placements are safe.  How long until Elon will be airing grievances in court against them for affecting X's ad revenue?