Viewability

If a tree falls and makes a sound in the middle of the forest but no one hears it, does it still make a sound?

This is a similar example to ad tech an impression may be delivered, but there may be no one that actually sees the ad. Advertisers and brands want to ensure that the ads they serve are actually seen by a user. To them, every dollar that is spent serving an unseen ad is a dollar wasted.

As one of the many tactics that buyers of media use to measure how effective their ad buys are, viewability measuring is a staple in our industry.

How is Viewability Measured?

The MRC states that an display ad is viewable if at least 50% of the pixels are in-view for at least 1 second. For video ads, 50% of the pixels must be in-view for at least 2 seconds.

The IAB follows these exact same guidelines, except they count larger sizes such as the 970×250 and 300×1050 as viewable if 30% of the pixels are in-view for at least 1 second.

Key Viewability Terms

• Measured Impressions (the number of impressions that the viewability partner was able to measure)
• Viewable Impressions (the number of impressions that the viewability partner measured as viewable)
• Total Impressions (the total number of impressions that were served)

Viewability Rate = Viewable Impressions/Measured Impressions * 1,000

Note that some of the impressions are unable to be measured due to technology limitations, but so the viewability rate is actual based on the portion of the inventory that was measurable.

Industry Viewability Standards According to IAB

54.7% of desktop display ads are in-view.

66.3% of desktop video ads are in-view.

46.5% desktop VCR

49.0% of mobile web display ads are in-view

57.6% of mobile app display ads are in-view

70.3% of mobile web video ads are in-view

41.4% mobile web VCR

Publishers vs Advertisers

By measuring viewability on ads served, advertisers are paying a premium to ensure that their ad quality is up to par. If the viewability metrics are lower than their expectations, advertisers can then bring this up to the publishers. This essentially brings up an extra layer of responsibility on the publisher’s behalf.

Within the purchase agreement, the buyer can add a viewability guarantee as one of the requirements of the publisher. The publisher can charge a premium for this, but they will be required to maintain a minimum viewability.

Causes of Poor Viewability

1. The user has enabled ad blocking software. Ad blockers are browser plugins or filters that hide or disable ads from loading. When the page loads, the ad blocker identifies ad slots and hides ad creatives, leaving these placements blank. For the end user, it seems like there is nothing there, but for the network, the ad is served, therefore it counts as an impression.
2. Non-human or bot traffic. Created by humans, bots are the programs that visit various websites and imitate human behavior: they scroll, click, refresh the feed, and engage with the content in a way a real user would. Ad networks cannot detect bot traffic, so they count every bot-generated impression as a successful one.
3. The user leaves a web page before the ad loads. 40% of people abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Many users open multiple tabs at the same time and browse through other programs while the ad loads and renders. The most common case is when the user quits the page and the session is torn down, but the impression is still counted.
4. Requests made by web crawlers, spiders, download managers, web-directories, link checkers, web filtering tools and other non-human technologies load the web page and generate ad impressions that are served successfully, but never get exposed to the human eye.
5. Location of the ads. Some of the ads are located in the “down the fold” or “scrolling” position or do not fit into the window dimension, therefore cannot be spotted by the user.
6. Ad stacking and pixel stuffing. When multiple ads are placed on the top of one another, with only the top one visible to the user, but impressions are reported for all layered ads. With pixel stuffing, a 1×1 pixel is placed on the site that loads as an ad creative but still not visible to the user. Such practices are fraudulent and illegal, but still take place in digital advertising.

Precautions and Other Thoughts

The goal of viewability is to ensure that advertiser budgets are actually being spent on influencing the viewer. Although it is a good standard and benchmark, these are some considerations to follow.

• A user can still be influenced by an ad that is 45% viewable.
• For videos with automatic sound on, a user can be influenced by merely the sound of the ad even if it is not viewable at all.
• How will ad measurement companies measure viewability for programmatic audio? Digital out of home?
• An ad may be 100% viewable, but the user may have wandered off elsewhere, away from the screen

Viewability Measurement Providers

• Integral Ad Science (IAS)
• DoubleVerify (DV)
• Moat
• Pixalate

Sources

• https://digiday.com/marketing/viewability-threshold-ads/
• https://smartyads.com/blog/ad-viewability-the-next-major-shift-in-the-adtech-industry/
• https://insider.integralads.com/h2-2017-mqr/
• https://www.adweek.com/digital/brands-with-their-own-viewability-standards-are-causing-headaches-for-the-ad-tech-industry/

The problem is you can’t spend enough to acquire a customer, and the way to fix that problem is to fix your sales funnel.

— Russell Brunson