Measuring and optimizing toward in-view and away from invalid ad impressions has become the standard for display and video campaigns. For those unfamiliar, “in-view” refers to online advertisements that are physically seen by a person, while “invalid” refers to unwanted traffic from non-human sources like bots, spiders and crawlers. Without looking at these metrics when analyzing and optimizing campaigns the whole picture isn’t visible to online advertisers, only pieces of it. The Media Rating Council (MRC) has been working to validate and accredit viewability and invalid traffic measurement companies. However, there are still limitations and changes within the industry that need to be made before “true” measurement is possible.
The increased emphasis on viewable impressions within the industry is encouraging publishers to make page format and cost model adjustments to improve their viewability percentages. In other words, pages are becoming shorter, ad units are moving adjacent to page content and longer ad units are being leveraged, among many other ways to increase viewability. Additionally, the way in which agencies and advertisers are paying for their impressions is evolving as many are forcing publishers to provide 100 percent viewability guarantees. Decreased impression volume and increased cost will be a result of these changes in format and pricing.
Read MoreMeasuring and optimizing toward in-view and away from invalid ad impressions has become the standard for display and video campaigns. For those unfamiliar, “in-view” refers to online advertisements that are physically seen by a person, while “invalid” refers to unwanted traffic from non-human sources like bots, spiders and crawlers. Without looking at these metrics when analyzing and optimizing campaigns the whole picture isn’t visible to online advertisers, only pieces of it. The Media Rating Council (MRC) has been working to validate and accredit viewability and invalid traffic measurement companies. However, there are still limitations and changes within the industry that need to be made before “true” measurement is possible.
The increased emphasis on viewable impressions within the industry is encouraging publishers to make page format and cost model adjustments to improve their viewability percentages. In other words, pages are becoming shorter, ad units are moving adjacent to page content and longer ad units are being leveraged, among many other ways to increase viewability. Additionally, the way in which agencies and advertisers are paying for their impressions is evolving as many are forcing publishers to provide 100 percent viewability guarantees. Decreased impression volume and increased cost will be a result of these changes in format and pricing. This is because publishers, in order to continue generating consistent revenue, will need to inflate their costs to account for the volume of unpaid impressions delivered due to the more rigorous viewability parameters.
Above and beyond in-view percentages, additional metrics should be taken into consideration to evaluate the true impact of an impression. Is the current threshold of half an ad seen for one second truly impactful to a consumer? Examples of additional metrics to consider when evaluating performance include the amount of time the ad was in view, how often and how long users were interacting with ads, understanding if audio was enabled for video units and if the units were visible through completion. These additional metrics help advertisers to level the playing field between partners and determine the true success of a campaign.
There are additional limitations when it comes to viewability measurement and standards that are a continued concern for advertisers and agencies. Mobile is one of the biggest challenges as the MRC has only accredited one mobile viewability measurement partner, Moat, while others are working toward accreditation. In-app environments pose an additional challenge: to track viewability a software development kit needs to be implemented within each publisher’s unique mobile app. This may be difficult to achieve, especially in the programmatic space where advertisers are running across hundreds of apps. The MRC recently released a draft of the mobile viewability standard for public comment, which outlines in detail expectations for mobile viewability providers. A final version is expected in the upcoming months.
Publishers are also dictating whether they will allow viewability tracking altogether. The two most notable names which have historically disallowed third-party viewability or invalid traffic tracking are Facebook and YouTube. As with mobile, Moat is leading the charge, working with both partners to allow third-party tracking. This capability is expected to be available in the coming months across these social channels.
Viewability has been a big focus in the branding side of media. However, viewability in direct response campaigns will also play an important role to determining media’s effectiveness on conversions. Tracking a viewable impression that leads to a conversion is not a widely used metric. That said, measurement companies are working to incorporate this metric into their offering.
With invalid traffic, detecting and optimizing away from culprits such as data centers, known bots, spiders and crawlers has been notably easy. The challenge is in identifying more sophisticated invalid traffic such as adware and malware. These latter forms, which are malicious in nature, work to artificially inflate certain websites’ impression levels by infecting computers with hidden programs that deliver invalid traffic. The problem for advertisers is this activity is much harder to detect and avoid. Still, the good news is that most advertisers are experiencing low levels of invalid traffic overall (between 2.5 to 4.7 percent depending on format and platform), and more action will undoubtedly occur in the near future to continue the fight against more complex offenders.
While there have been great strides toward improving the quality of ad impressions online, the industry still has a way to go before it perfects viewability and invalid traffic tracking and measurement. On the bright side, technological advancements and industry action over the coming year will bring the industry closer than ever to identifying the true value of a valid, viewable ad impression.