By
Alexandra Northington
What is viewability, you ask?
First things first: A viewable
impression is a metric of online advertising that indicates if a display ad is
actually viewable when it's served. More specifically, the Interactive
Advertising Bureau and Media Rating Council define a viewable impression as one
that’s at least 50 percent visible for at least one second.
Simply put, viewability is a metric
that tracks if at least half of a display ad has the chance to be seen in the
viewable portion of a browser window for at least one continuous second.
Note: technically speaking, the
guidelines measure time in terms of 100 millisecond intervals, so a continuous
second equates to 10 consecutive 100 millisecond observations. To add even more
confusion, if the ad is 242,500 pixels or greater, only 30 percent needs to be
in view. You can check out the full set of guidelines on the MRC
website.
Back in March, the MRC lifted the
advisory against using viewable impressions as a currency for buying, selling
and measuring advertising in the digital display space, marking the first time
the industry has established a single measurement for viewability. (While
viewability has been a topic for several years now, the MRC issued an advisory
against transacting on viewable impressions in November 2012 due to known
technological limitations. Removal of the advisory earlier this year gave
marketplace players the go ahead to transact.)
Why is viewability such a hot topic of
conversation?
Digital advertisers have been pushing
for measurements that would give them a better sense of how many people their
campaigns actually reach. Turns out, comScore found that up to 54% of display
ads aren’t viewable as a result of things like rapid scrolling, ad placements
that weren’t seen, and non-human (bot) traffic. Brand marketers were not too
thrilled to find out they had been paying for ad impressions that nobody was
seeing and called for a system with more accountability and transparency.
So, after much deliberation, enter
IAB's and MRC's new standard of measurement. The hope among the trade body is
that the new viewability standard will shift the entire currency of the
industry from an impressions-served standard to an impressions-viewed one.
Big picture, what will this shift mean
for the digital ad ecosystem?
In short, the way online media is sold
is changing. On the demand side, advertisers are gaining more transparency and
will expect guarantees on viewable display impressions in the future.
Theoretically, this will improve campaign performance, as eventually,
advertisers will only pay for ads that have the potential to be seen.
On the supply side, opinions are
varied. Some publishers are concerned that this shift will have a negative
impact on ad revenues since their supply of impressions to sell may be
significantly reduced. This fear has already resulted in some publishers
rethinking site design to increase viewability.
On the other hand, publishers that are
focusing on premium ad experiences see this as a largely positive change. If a
publisher can guarantee that ads are actually being seen by an engaged
audience, it can leverage those high viewability percentages to demand higher
costs for certain impressions. David Payne, Chief Digital Officer at Gannett,
summed it up well in a recent post: “Viewability provides us another proof
point that shows how our premium content creates highly engaged audiences
perfect for branding campaigns.”
So, are people really adopting
viewability as the standard?
Now that the viewability standard has
been set (though some folks are questioning it), viewability requests are
beginning to come in to direct sales teams. Major general interest publishers
are already seeing more viewability requests, and expect to see an increase in
requests in Q1 2015. Smaller, endemic publishers are initiating programs to
research their own sites’ viewability, so as to prepare for when they too begin
to encounter viewability requests in requests for proposals.
Coming next week: What do the changes
mean for digital publishers?
Alexandra Northington is a writer for Chartbeat.
This post was originally published on Data-Fueled Thinking and Making
a blog from Chartbeat, a startup that gives more than 5,000 publishers
real-time data about how people are engaging with their content. You can follow
Chartbeat on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
Image CC-licensed on Flickr via Brian Henry Thompson.
Source: Ijnet.org
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