iWorld
IAS expands total media quality product to YouTube Shorts
Mumbai: Integral Ad Science (Nasdaq: IAS) a global media measurement and optimization platform announced an expansion of its measurement capabilities on YouTube. IAS will now offer its industry brand safety and suitability measurement product to advertisers for YouTube Shorts inventory, as part of its existing total media quality for YouTube product suite.
YouTube Shorts is one of the short-form video platforms in the world and is growing rapidly with more than 2 billion users and over 70 billion views daily.
IAS will now provide additional valuable third-party assurance for brands that their video ads running on YouTube Shorts are appearing in brand safe and suitable content with video-level transparency as defined by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) framework and adjacency standards. With total media quality for YouTube, advertisers can view brand safety and suitability metrics for impressions served on YouTube shorts, in addition to viewability and invalid traffic measurement, globally across more than 30 languages.
As part of its brand safety and suitability measurement, IAS also now offers an analytics dashboard for advertisers on YouTube to analyse brand safety and suitability trends with charts and create a custom suitability profile.
IAS CEO Lisa Utzschneider said “Since IAS launched total media quality for YouTube earlier this year, we’ve been able to provide new levels of insight into video content for advertisers through our advanced AI-driven technology and expanded reporting capabilities, with this expansion of our measurement capabilities on YouTube, we can bring marketers the most actionable data to maximize their safety on YouTube shorts inventory – one of the fastest growing video formats in digital advertising.”
iWorld
X launches XChat messaging app on iOS with calls and encryption
Standalone app marks shift from “everything app” vision, adds E2E messaging.
MUMBAI: From one big app to many small chats, X seems to be splitting its ambitions. X has rolled out its standalone messaging app, XChat, to iOS users, opening up a new front in its evolving product strategy. The app allows users to connect with existing X contacts through private and group messages, file sharing, as well as audio and video calls. The launch follows a limited beta phase, where the platform tested the product with a smaller user base to refine the experience. Now available publicly, XChat marks a notable pivot from earlier ambitions championed by Elon Musk to turn X into a single “everything app” combining messaging, payments, commerce and more.
Instead, the company under xAI ownership and backed by SpaceX appears to be building a suite of standalone applications, each targeting specific use cases while expanding its broader ecosystem.
At launch, XChat includes end-to-end encrypted messaging, PIN-based access, disappearing messages, and features such as message editing, deletion for all participants, and screenshot blocking. The company has also said the app is free from advertisements and tracking mechanisms, positioning it as a privacy-first alternative in a crowded messaging space.
However, security claims around the platform are likely to face scrutiny. Earlier iterations of XChat drew criticism from experts who argued it fell short of established encrypted platforms like Signal. With the wider rollout, the app is expected to undergo fresh evaluation to assess whether those concerns have been addressed.
Beyond messaging, XChat will also house X’s Communities feature, which is being discontinued on the main platform due to low usage and spam concerns. Migrating these users could provide an early boost to adoption, effectively turning XChat into both a communication and community hub.
The move underscores a broader recalibration at X less about cramming everything into one app, and more about spreading bets across multiple touchpoints, one message at a time.
