Case Study: Mastercard achieves 82% brand safety improvement and 72% lower cost per quality impression with Integral Ad Science

Improving brand safety and suitability with IAS programmatic optimization

MasterCard (SEA), a global payments technology company, needed to meet a new global brand safety benchmark of 98% while reducing fail rates and invalid traffic across programmatic campaigns. They also wanted real‑time signals to optimize before bids were placed, so they sought a trusted pre‑ and post‑bid verification partner — Integral Ad Science — to improve brand safety, suitability and media quality.

Integral Ad Science implemented a custom pre‑bid strategy aligned to MasterCard’s post‑bid settings, enabling three IAS pre‑bid solutions (Brand Safety, Contextual Avoidance and Fraud) from May 2022. The program delivered measurable uplifts: brand safety pass rate improved by 82%, invalid traffic metrics improved by 15%, and cost per quality impression improved by 72%, enabling MasterCard to make confident, data‑backed brand safety decisions.

MasterCard