Moat

Was a top-tier independent ad measurement and verification platform before acquisition; competed directly with IAS and DoubleVerify for brand safety and viewability measurement market share.

Moat was a leading advertising analytics and measurement company founded in 2010 by Jonah Goodhart, Noah Goodhart, and Michael Walrath. The platform became widely respected in the digital advertising industry for its innovative approach to measuring ad viewability, attention, and brand safety across display, video, and mobile formats. Moat's analytics tools helped advertisers, agencies, and publishers understand whether ads were actually seen by real humans, providing metrics that went beyond simple impressions to capture meaningful engagement signals. Its 'Moat Score' and attention analytics became industry benchmarks. In April 2017, Oracle acquired Moat for approximately $850 million, integrating it into Oracle Data Cloud as a cornerstone measurement and verification offering. Under Oracle's ownership, Moat continued to serve major brands, agencies, and publishers, competing directly with rivals like IAS (Integral Ad Science) and DoubleVerify in the ad verification space. The platform offered third-party measurement accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC) and was deeply integrated into major programmatic and direct buying workflows across the industry. Moat's story ended in 2024 when Oracle announced a full exit from the advertising technology business. On September 30, 2024, Moat was shut down entirely alongside Oracle's other ad tech assets, including Oracle Advertising. The $850 million acquisition was effectively written down to near zero, marking one of the most notable failures of a major enterprise technology company's attempt to build a dominant ad tech stack. The shutdown left a gap in the measurement ecosystem and prompted many customers to migrate to competing verification platforms.