Google announced on Tuesday that it has completed the upgrading of all CPM campaigns on the Google Display Network to viewable CPM (vCPM) campaigns making the GDN one platform where advertisers don’t pay for impressions unless they’re actually viewable by the user.
“Viewable CPM (vCPM) buying was launched in AdWords in 2013 so advertisers could choose to only pay for display and video impressions that meet the MRC defined industry standard for viewability,” says AdWords product manager Glenn Wilson. “Fifty percent or more of the ad must appear on screen — for at least 1 second for display ads and 2 seconds for video ads, as measured by Google’s Active View technology. This year, tens of billions of impressions were filtered out before ever being charged to AdWords advertisers because they didn’t meet this standard.”
Google also announced new viewable frequency capping, which it says will give advertisers better control over how many times their ads appear to the same person.
“When unviewable impressions are counted toward a frequency cap, a user may not see your ad as many times as you intended,” says Wilson.
Frequency capping will only count viewable impressions for display and video campaigns in AdWords starting in the coming weeks.
There are also new reporting metrics including total impressions that were viewable, percentage of impressions that were viewable, and percentage of viewable ads that were clicked.
Google announced the latest phase of its efforts to give advertisers and agencies more choice in viewability reporting with third party viewability reporting for YouTube.
Advertisers will now be able to choose from third party vendors in addition to Active View. Initially this will include Moat, Integral AdScience, comScore and DoubleVerify, starting with Moat in early 2016.
“We’ve been investing in a broad set of measurement solutions for brands through a combination of product innovation with our own solutions like Brand Lift and Active View and partnerships with leading third parties like comScore and Nielsen on GRPs,” says Google’s Sanaz Ahari. “Viewability has long been a focus for us. Built on the foundation of our Active View technology, we launched the ability to buy only viewable impressions on the Google Display Network back in December 2013 and recently completed moving over the last advertiser campaigns from CPMs to viewable CPMs. We’ve worked to ensure viewability rates on YouTube are amongst the industry’s highest. And Active View now works seamlessly across video, display, mobile web and mobile apps (on YouTube and for publishers using DoubleClick for Publishers), and has been adopted by over 80% of advertisers using the DoubleClick platform.”
“With the MRC-defined industry standard as a base-line for viewability, we are also helping advertisers and agencies go beyond transacting on the industry standard to also measure individual viewability objectives,” says Ahari. “In order to support this we have begun launching supplementary metrics in Active View, like the ability to see average viewable time and soon when an ad is 100% in view for any length in time. These are the first few in a lineup of supplementary metrics that will provide advertisers with additional data points relevant to their specific campaigns and needs.”
Google says it will continue to expand measurement options for marketers on YouTube through the new partnerships.
Google announced new tools for advertisers including AdWords Audience Insights, 100% Viewability on the Google Display Network, and enhancements to dynamic remarketing.
Audience Insights
The AdWords Audience Insights Reports give advertisers aggregate information about people on their remarketing lists, such as demographics, interests, locations, and device usage. The reports are available in the AdWords interface so action can be taken relatively easily.
Google uses the example that if most people converted on a site are jazz enthusiasts, the advertiser could add that as an affinity audience to the campaign. Another example it uses is targeting the 25 to 34-year-old female demographic if that’s what a large percentage of your customers are.
“BASE, a Belgian telecommunications company, used AdWords audience insights and discovered cycling enthusiasts were twice as likely as the average customer to buy a mobile phone subscription,” Google says. “Based on this insight, BASE engaged with cycling enthusiasts on the GDN and doubled its conversions. BASE now uses AdWords audience insights to inform its campaigns, online and offline.”
Viewability
Google says 56% of display ads have never had a chance to be view because they were below the fold, scrolled out of view, or in a background tab. To make things better for advertisers, it’s not going to charge them for ads that aren’t viewable.
“Soon, we’ll make the GDN one of the only media platforms where advertisers don’t pay for an ad impression unless it was viewable. This means your media dollars will only be spent where they can have impact. In the next few months, all campaigns that buy on a CPM basis will be upgraded to be viewable CPM (vCPM).”
Finally, Google announced enhancements to dynamic remarketing that enable ads to be automatically re-shaped and re-sized to fit all devices. Ads will also be “touched up” to look better on whatever device it’s being displayed on.
“For example, if your logo is predominantly blue and yellow, AdWords may use these colors to shade the border and background of your ad,” the company says. “We’ll even try out varying color combinations and use the ones that drive the best performance. As always, you have control to make changes to these selections based on your personal style and preferences.”
You can read more about all of the new offerings as well as an example of how Sony Playstation is using Audience Insights here.
It’s very hard to reach consumers on Facebook without paying for it these days. Luckily, as organic reach has decreased drastically for businesses over the past couple years, Facebook has dramatically improved advertising over that time period, offering numerous tools, targeting options and tweaks.
The company just made two major announcements that address concerns some advertisers have still had with the platform, including viewability and measurement legitimacy. In a nutshell, Facebook is giving advertisers a new 100% in-view impression buying option and has partnered with a third-party analytics provider to bring in some independent insights so advertisers don’t have to simply trust Facebook on data.
Facebook says the new announcements give advertisers more control over how they run and measure their ads.
As the company outlined earlier this year, it counts viewed impressions the moment an ad enters the screen of a desktop browser or mobile app (if an ad doesn’t enter the screen it doesn’t count it). Some advertisers don’t like this approach, as they (understandably) don’t necessarily want to pay for impressions in cases where the user didn’t even see the entire ad.
Facebook still sees its original method as the best course of action, but recognizes that not all marketers agree, so it’s giving them the option to buy 100% in-view impressions if they think that will work better for them.
“While it remains our belief that value is created for an advertiser as soon as an ad is in view, we also believe in offering advertisers control and flexibility over how they run their ads,” the company says in a blog post.
Just to be clear, the 100% in-view impression means the entire ad – from top to bottom – has passed through the user’s screen in the News Feed.
Advertisers will be able to buy all types of ads – text, photo, link, and video – with this option.
As mentioned, Facebook also announced a partnership so that advertisers don’t have to take Facebook at its word when it comes to measurement and reporting. That partnership is with Moat, which has also partnered with Twitter on video viewability measurement in the past.
Facebook is integrating Moat’s technology to verify its video ad views and view lengths so advertisers can gain “assurance” about their video ad campaign performance. The partnership will only cover video viewability for the time being, but eventually, it will expand to other types of ads. That includes 100% in-view impressions and the Instagram platform, which is now becoming available to all businesses and utilizes Facebook’s targeting capabilities.
Unilever CMO Keith Weed has been critical of Facebook’s handling of viewability and reporting in the past, but seems pleased with the new announcements.
He said, “Our position on this has been clear for some time: We need to get standards that help define viewability across different platforms and publishers, and those standards need to be third-party verified. It is very encouraging to see Facebook joining the ranks of digital media partners who are setting themselves apart – and this commitment continues the momentum. Our hope is that these steps will lead ultimately to 100% viewability through third party verification across the industry.”
GroupM Worldwide Chief Digital Officer Rob Norman said, “What we want is quite simple: Ads that are actually seen by real people. We want viewability standards across clients and publishers that honor that position, and we want publishers to be held accountable by independent third-parties. We’re very encouraged that Facebook is partnering with Moat as a third-party verified solution. We remain committed to view duration as well as verification of appearance of the ad in the viewable window and hope that all sellers will recognize and align on an appropriate measurement standard. Facebook’s scale moves the industry one step closer to the standards we’ve been seeking.”
Facebook doesn’t say exactly when the 100% in-view buying option will be available, but just that it will be available soon. It promises to keep advertisers updated on the Facebook for Business site, but also says advertisers can talk to account reps about it further.
Are you pleased with Facebook’s announcements? Do you feel better about advertising on Facebook now as a result? Let us know in the comments.
Google’s DoubleClick announced a new Gross Rating Point (GRP) solution resulting from a partnership with comScore, which was announced last year. It’s called comScore vCE in DoubleClick.
It also announced updates to its Active View viewability solution.
comScore vCE in DoubleClick is described as an independent, tagless audience delivery measurement service for integrating directly in to an ad server to give advertisers and publishers a “trusted” solution for video and display.
It’s available to all DoubleClick customers across DoubleClick Digital Marketing and DoubleClick for Publishers.
“This means advertisers can now see if they’re reaching their target audience as it happens,” says Sanaz Ahari, Group Product Manager, Brand Measurement at DoubleClick. “And publishers will be able to make adjustments during the course of a campaign to meet their advertisers’ needs — no more after the fact reporting and make-goods.”
“With this tagless and single-click workflow, advertiser and publisher clients will have 100% coverage,” Ahari adds. “Publishers will have the ability to forecast their audience availability to ensure they meet advertiser commitments. For advertisers, in addition to scheduled reports we are introducing new audience cards that surface reports with simple and easy to read visuals.”
On the Active View front, Google announced that users will be able to measure average viewable time (in seconds) in DoubleClick Bid Manager.
The company says that in response to feedback from clients, it’s also working to expand Active View beyond Google’s own media and platforms so that advertisers and publishers can use it across all their media buys.
The Media Rating Council (MRC) has released the results of the third phase of its viewability measurement reconciliation testing. It had conducted two prior phases, which identified requirements for vendors to follow in order to “minimize discrepancies in viewability measurement.”
This most recent phase is the final phase of testing. The MRC received data from campaigns accounting for about four billion served ad impressions across a wide range of site, placement, and creative types for both display and video ads. It found that for about two thirds of campaigns, differences between vendors’ viewable impression counts were within what was deemed an “acceptable” range. For the other campaigns, there were differences of more than 10%. They found more variability in smaller campaigns of less than 100,000 viewable impressions.
54% of the difference was a result of differing treatments of mobile viewable impressions in vendors’ reporting, the MRC says, adding that 28% of the difference resulted from vendors treating multi-ad units in different fashions for measurement and reporting purposes.13% of the difference was from differences in whether vendors opt to measure ad traffic served in a campaign by ad servers other than themselves. 2% was from differences noted in the application of certain ad verification processes and the reporting of viewable impressions within said processes, and 3% was from other causes, including issues that were previously identified in earlier testing phases.
The IAB gave us this statement:
From the moment that 3MS (Making Measurement Make Sense), a joint effort by the ANA, the 4As and the IAB, put forth guiding principles of measurement in 2011, the IAB has consistently advocated for viewable impression currency. Every ad should have the opportunity to be seen.
Today, many publishers, agencies and advertisers are employing the MRC standard for a viewable impression along with the IAB Viewability Transaction Principles. This is all good.
The findings from this most recent round of measurement reconciliation work by the MRC support the IAB Viewability Transaction Principles published at the end of 2014. In that document, we cited reasons why measurement and technology improvements would be required to get to 100% Viewability and stated that in 2015, a 70% Viewability threshold for campaigns was a reasonable goal.
In February 2015, at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, David Morris, Chief Revenue Officer, CBS Interactive and Chairman of the IAB Board of Directors, called for rapid improvement in the amount of media measured, the ability to measure all ad units and the need for standards and accurate measurement in mobile. Clearly, the MRC analysis demonstrates the need to move faster in solving for the root causes of measurement disparity and inadequacies. The IAB has maintained that 2015 is the year of transition. As long as we continue to make progress in isolating the causes of measurement inconsistency and remedying them, thus achieving accurate measurement, we believe that 2016 will be the year of even greater Viewability and measurability.
Now is the time to move from good to great. The path is mapped out for us: all vendors must follow the MRC recommendations to improve Viewability measurement and they must do so as rapidly as possible (lest they risk losing accreditation).
The IAB looks forward to working with all partners in this dynamic ecosystem to provide 100% viewability, based on accurate measurement, to our advertisers.
You can find an in-depth review of the study here.
Yahoo announced that it is giving advertisers the ability to independently measure viewability and fraud for display and video advertising on Yahoo owned and operated properties as well as media purchased across its programmatic buying platform. Advertisers can choose from third-party measurement solutions from comScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, Moat, and others to validate for viewability and fraud.
As Yahoo notes, no other large premium digital publishers are providing this capability in such an open way. Others will likely follow suit.
The partnerships with these third-party companies is aimed at catering to the viewability initiatives from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Media Rating Council (MRC).
“We’ve been investing in viewability and fraud measurement solutions to increase trust between advertisers and publishers for some time now,” said Dennis Buchheim, VP of product management at Yahoo. “At Yahoo, we believe advertisers should have the flexibility to verify viewability and fraud levels with the tools of their choice, which is why we’re partnering with leading, independent measurement companies to give our customers the confidence they deserve when running campaigns on our inventory and across the web.”
“Viewability and fraud continue to be major issues in the digital ad space, and it’s time for advertisers to demand accountability and transparency from publishers and technology providers,” said Scott Knoll, CEO of Integral Ad Science. “We hope the industry will follow Yahoo’s lead in working with independent, accredited companies like ours that are not involved in buying or selling media, as that is the only way to get a truly unbiased read-out on viewability and fraud.”
“As an industry we continue to make great strides to improve the quality and effectiveness of digital media and to instill confidence from the world’s largest brands,” said Wayne Gattinella, CEO of DoubleVerify. “We applaud Yahoo for their leadership and initiative in providing open, third-party measurement across its sites and we look forward to building a more trustworthy digital supply chain together.”
The IAB recommends the campaign threshold for viewability should be 70%.
Mobile ad marketplace Millennial Media announced that it will offer its clients a guarantee of 100% viewability for in-app mobile ad campaigns. This comes as the industry is “desperately” seeking guidelines for viewability. It’s a bold move for sure.
The Media Rating Council announced last week that it has issued interim guidance for how to proceed with measuring and transacting around mobile viewability. This applies to the “Opportunity to See” an ad in a mobile web browser or a mobile app.
“In order to deliver on this first of its kind initiative, the company is partnering with Integral Ad Science, the only at-scale vendor that can currently measure in-app viewability,” a spokesperson for Millennial Media tells WebProNews. “The guarantee will be fulfilled by participating Millennial Media clients only being billed once their ad is verified viewable by Integral Ad Science.”
“This move is a significant step in Millennial Media’s ongoing commitment to make digital advertising more accountable, as well as helping the industry to spearhead well defined and commonly accepted standards around viewability (by continuing to work together with partners such as Integral Ad Science, as well as the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Media Rating Council),” the spokesperson adds.
“The mobile ad ecosystem is desperately seeking guidelines around viewability,” said Michael Barrett, President & CEO at Millennial Media and an IAB Board Member. “Today, we are choosing the highest standard possible by offering a 100% in-app viewability guarantee. We have selected Integral Ad Science as our measurement partner because they are the only at-scale vendor that can currently measure in-app viewability. We will continue to partner closely with the MRC, IAB, and the mobile ad ecosystem to define industry-wide standards around viewability. We are committed to becoming the largest mobile marketplace that provides 100% viewable, brand safe, and fraud free impressions.”
Integral Ad Science recently completed an audit of the Millennial network, and both companies have been working with publishers on technical changes that improve viewability. It must be going well if they’re making a 100% guarantee.
Millennial defines viewability as 100% of the ad being in view for at least one second. The guarantee applies to in-app banner ads and interstitials Additional formats may be added later.
At first, the guarantee will only be applied to campaigns running on inventory originating in the U.S. and U.K. but a global rollout is planned for later this year. It dos not apply to inventory purchased programmatically, but Millennial is also working with Integral Ad Science to enable it in the Millennial Media Exchange.
You can learn more about the guarantee on this FAQ page.
The Media Rating Council (MRC) just issued its interim guidance for the digital marketing and advertising industry on how to proceed with measuring and transacting around mobile viewability. This applies to the “Opportunity to See” an ad in a mobile web browser or a mobile app.
As you may know, the MRC works with other industry organizations (ANA, IAB and 4As) under the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative. Its goal is to “facilitate industry discussion and conduct additional, necessary research to create permanent guidelines that account for the specific nuances of mobile web environments.”
“In guidance issued in 2014, the MRC noted the need for further study to determine if existing Viewable Impression standards could apply to mobile,” an MRC spokesperson tells WebProNews. “Mobile presents technical complications as well as inherently different use cases because of how individuals interact with their devices.”
For the most part, the new mobile guidance reflects the existing desktop guidance with iewable impression measurement of ads following the model: “50% of pixels in the viewable space of the browser for a minimum of one second for display and two seconds for video ads.”
The mobile guidance also has a new metric for “Loaded Ad,” which “recognizes that measurement of both pixels in view and time in view may be particularly challenging in mobile at present.”
“A Loaded Ad is a measure, explicitly designed as an interim metric specific for mobile in application measurement until such time that the state of that measurement fully matures, that provides users with some assurance that the ad did load on the screen, although it does not meet the requirements for qualifying as a viewable impression,” the MRC explains.
So far, nobody has been accredited as yet by the MRC for mobile viewable impression measurement. It says the new guidance should be considered as a path for organizations that wish to become accredited to do so.
“After the issuance of the desktop and video viewability guidelines last year, it became clear that technical characteristics of the mobile ad serving environment require the development of new or enhanced methods for determining the viewability of mobile-delivered ads,” said MRC CEO and Executive Director George Ivie. “Furthermore, the ways in which users interact with content and ads in mobile environments are inherently different from those observed in the desktop environment, possibly creating differences in where the moment of ‘opportunity-to-see’ occurs. As such, we will need to conduct extensive study, testing, and industry discussion to develop more permanent guidance. In the meantime, we have issued a set of interim approaches to mobile viewable impression measurement and reporting to allow the industry to transact in as seamless a manner as possible.”
The MRC notes that all previous guidance is superseded by the new guidance, which will remain in place until it issues a standard by the end of the year.
As you know, the issue of ad viewability can be a contentious one among advertisers, agencies, and publishers, and we recently looked at this from various angles based on what such parties have been saying in the media.
Some of that contention is related to the industry standard that calls for desktop display ads to be considered viewable if 50% of their pixels are in view for a minimum of one second (for larger units it’s 30% for one second).
Ted Dhanik, CEO of digital advertising company engage:BDR shares some thoughts.
“The industry-accepted standard for viewability, set by the 3MS, is an important step in the pursuit of heightened ad quality across the board, and adoption of it is necessary for players in our space,” he tells WebProNews. “However, at engage:BDR, we don’t believe that the conversation ends there. We encourage advertisers and publishers to use this standard as a beginning, and transact on metrics that push for heightened engagement.”
He says the definitions set by organizations like the Marketing Research Council and the Interactive Advertising Bureau are a “good start” and are “much needed by the industry,” but that they aren’t a full solution, but rather “a good jumping off point.”
“The conversation needs to include what happens after a minimum standard is reached,” he says. “In our eyes, that minimum standard is great for establishing a human user. However, vendors need to offer solutions that answer needs past that- perhaps an advertiser wants to pay only for views exceeding five seconds, or perhaps they believe true engagement must include 100% of pixels.”
Dhanik doesn’t think pushing for a stricter standard is the right way to go, but rather that advertisers and publishers “need to address other factors in the conversation around viewability, so that whether or not an ad met the minimum standard is not the only measure of success.”
He thinks advertisers should push to buy ads at a higher threshold based on their creative.
“No one is going to fully consume the content of an ad at one second, and if they do, they certainly won’t recall it,” he says. “Advertisers should set the threshold based on the content of their creative. A simple creative might be great at a three-second minimum, but for a pharmaceutical brand, who has a lot of details to include, you might want to buy 20-second slots.”
According to Dhanik, publishers can optimize content to create ad engagement and monetize at a higher rate, even for below-the-fold placements.
“As we all know, content is king,” he says. “Publishers who provide high-quality content below the fold will be able to monetize those spaces better than ever before, since viewers will be spending time there, and we are now able to measure that and provide our publishers with appropriate rates.”
He says he has nothing but respect for the 3MS, noting that the association “established something groundbreaking in our industry.”
“I see a heavy push from advertisers and agencies asking for higher time thresholds, as well as full units on screen, but we wouldn’t even be having that conversation without the 3MS,” he adds.
One of the biggest issues about viewability is that there has been a lot of confusion surrounding it. We recently looked at an infographic from The Mobile Majority focusing on clarifying mobile viewability. Check that out here.
The subject of ad viewability continues to be a contentious one throughout the industry, and many are simply confused by various elements of the debate, and rightfully so. It’s pretty confusing. There are so many factors and parties that come into play it’s pretty much a big mess.
There are organizations trying to change that, but in some cases, it’s only adding more layers to an already complex discussion. Last week, we attempted to provide something of a round-up of some of the latest discussion points.
While the viewability issue spans across devices, mobile is a major part. The Mobile Majority released a new study on mobile ad viewability based on IAB and MRC standards as well as its own internal architecture in an apparent attempt to clarify what’s going on here. The company says it didn’t set out to define terms of the viewability debate for an entire industry, but considers its study, which was originally intended for internal use, “the first solid framework for a viewability debate that is already underway.”
The study, it says, enables advertisers, ad tech partners and other stakeholders to discuss the viewability issue using “a common set of assumptions.”
The findings are packaged in a relatively easy-to-read infographic.
“There is broad agreement within the industry on what viewability is, but until now, it has been difficult for stakeholders to physically see what needs to happen in order for viewability to be achieved,” said Matthew Russo, Lead Educator at The Mobile Majority. “This infographic maps the complexities out and gives industry stakeholders a way to define the process, understand how to track what is happening, and identify the potential opportunities for error. By breaking down each step and putting it in a visual format, we were able to illustrate the major bottlenecks within the current set-up and validate our approach of integrating each step of the process. That’s how we’ve been able to produce results higher than most of the industry averages.”
“There isn’t a simple solution for this problem, due to the complex and circuitous path by which mobile ads are built and trafficked,” he wrote. “What’s more, the journey from creation to an actual viewed ad is perplexed by a number of moving parts managed and maintained by far too many vendors and commensurate associated fees. This drives up complexity and cost on top of media which hurts both publishers and buyers. For instance, to run any single large scale mobile campaign, a buyer would need somewhere between 4 and 10 vendors. At the very least, they would need vendors to manage strategy, creative technology, ad serving, bidding, targeting, data activation, measurement, reporting / BI and fraud detection. Every time there is a handoff, whether by computer or more often (still) by humans, of an ad from one vendor to another, there is a loss of data or at least some sort of compromise in quality. Sorting out accountability for final results becomes impossible because no one vendor can be blamed or held accountable. This leads to an opaque and broken marketplace that no one individual participant can fix.”
“Not only has this created an inefficient system, a distrust in the technology itself has emerged,” he added. “This is because viewability reporting is just as chaotically layered as the building of an ad. 3rd party viewability vendors often produce inconsistent viewability reports originating from different sets of available data from different layers of the full ad technology stack. This in turn confuses buyers even more and creates a compounding loss of confidence.”
Back in December, the IAB released its “State of Viewability Transaction 2015″ report aimed at offering guidance on how to manage the “shift of digital media’s ‘audience currency’ to 100 percent viewability.”
It said 100% viewability measurement simply isn’t possible. Instead, it recommends 70% as the best threshold for buyers and sellers. 2015, it says, will be a “year of transition.”
Since the IAB’s report, viewability has only become a more hotly debated topic. Advertisers are demanding more viewability while publishers struggle to deliver and maintain that advertisers are sometimes not seeing the big picture about the difficulty of meeting such demand, or in some cases even the validity of the data they’re seeing. More on all of this here.
If there’s one hot topic in online advertising in 2015, it’s viewability. It’s causing a lot of disagreements between advertisers and publishers, and it’s the subject of a great deal of confusion and chaos throughout the industry.
What are your thoughts on the subject? What needs to be done? How do publishers need to adapt? Should advertisers be more patient? Discuss in the comments.
Google and Facebook have both been talking about viewability efforts of late. Google recently rolled out viewability reporting across its ad platforms. Facebook talked last week about what viewed impressions mean for its own advertisers.
The company says it measures ad impressions the moment the ad enters the screen, and if it doesn’t enter the screen, it doesn’t count it as an impression. Soon it will apply this to organic content from businesses as well. It also says it’s working with the Media Rating Council (MRC) and a consortium of advertisers and agencies to develop “more robust standards” for viewable impressions.
“Our goal is to work with the MRC, our partners, and industry leaders around the world to help apply further standards for feed-based websites like Facebook, mobile media and new ad formats,” the Facebook for Business team said.
“We’re working closely with Facebook and they’re doing compelling research around the viewable status and value of advertising of all types of impressions on their media, including those that quickly come in and out of view on a person’s screen. We will continue to collaborate and ensure that we consider the learning relevant to feed-based, mobile focused publishers in our viewable impression standard going forward,” said MRC CEO George Ivie.
According to ClickZ, the MRC considers viewability to be specifically “50 percent of pixels of an ad unit remains viewable for a minimum of one second for display and 50 percent of pixels in view for a minimum of two seconds for video,” which many find much too low.
Back in December, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released its “State of Viewability Transaction 2015″ report aimed at offering guidance on how to manage the “shift of digital media’s ‘audience currency’ to 100 percent viewability.”
It said 100% viewability measurement simply isn’t possible. Instead, it recommends 70% as the best threshold for buyers and sellers. 2015, it says, will be a “year of transition.”
Since the IAB’s report, viewability has only become a more hotly debated topic. Advertisers are demanding more viewability while publishers struggle to deliver and maintain that advertisers are sometimes not seeing the big picture about the difficulty of meeting such demand, or in some cases even the validity of the data they’re seeing.
Ad Age recently shared some demands by advertisers it had obtained from various publishers. Some demand 100% viewability. Others are more reasonable, but are still very firm in seeking “make-goods” for out of view impressions. Suffice it to say, this is being much more carefully looked at by all parties these days.
Last month, Mike Shields at The Wall Street Journal wrote that “the push for web ad viewability [is] proving to be a nightmare for publishers early on.”
“In the near term, the issue has caused contentious negotiations and rocked how many big publishers manage and forecast inventory for 2015, which in turn effects how they project revenue for the year, top online ad executives say,” he wrote. “Publishers say that while they have been out in front of the viewability issue, they are getting hit with reports from agencies and third parties claiming that significant chunks of their ad inventory are not viewable. That’s requiring these websites to deliver advertisers significant make-goods, or additional advertising to make up for deficiencies. Furthermore, properties ranging from AOL to Forbes are redesigning portions of their websites on the fly as a result,. In private conversations, many online publishers are bitter, and use harsh language to describe the current state of affairs.”
In that article, he also notes that mobile and the wide variety of screen sizes can be a major issue when it comes to viewability. I couldn’t help but notice a comment on the article from The Mobile Majority CEO Rob Emrich, who we just interviewed about Twitter’s syndicated ads. Here’s an excerpt from his WSJ comment:
There isn’t a simple solution for this problem, due to the complex and circuitous path by which mobile ads are built and trafficked. What’s more, the journey from creation to an actual viewed ad is perplexed by a number of moving parts managed and maintained by far too many vendors and commensurate associated fees. This drives up complexity and cost on top of media which hurts both publishers and buyers. For instance, to run any single large scale mobile campaign, a buyer would need somewhere between 4 and 10 vendors. At the very least, they would need vendors to manage strategy, creative technology, ad serving, bidding, targeting, data activation, measurement, reporting / BI and fraud detection. Every time there is a handoff, whether by computer or more often (still) by humans, of an ad from one vendor to another, there is a loss of data or at least some sort of compromise in quality. Sorting out accountability for final results becomes impossible because no one vendor can be blamed or held accountable. This leads to an opaque and broken marketplace that no one individual participant can fix.
Not only has this created an inefficient system, a distrust in the technology itself has emerged. This is because viewability reporting is just as chaotically layered as the building of an ad. 3rd party viewability vendors often produce inconsistent viewability reports originating from different sets of available data from different layers of the full ad technology stack. This in turn confuses buyers even more and creates a compounding loss of confidence.
Eric Wheeler, the CEO of 33Across and former Executive Director of Ogilvy Interactive North America, advises advertisers to work with viewability vendors to create verification tests and run A/B tests with ad units vs. standard IAB.
The IAB maintains that there are major issues with vendor reporting, however. At its annual leadership meeting earlier this month, new chairman David Morris reportedly “singled out” vendor reporting as a “key problem holding the industry back on viewable impressions.” Ad Age reported:
Mr. Morris said that publishers often find substantial differences between vendors on the same line items. “Publishers need to demand that verification companies do a better job of delivering consistent and accurate data,” he said. “To our agency partners, I say reducing the number of vendors you use will help us scale these solutions more quickly.”
According to that same report, Morris “took pains to draw a line between” viewability and fraud. We recently looked at a report from Integral Ad Science, which explored ad viewability trends. It found that the viewability rate for publisher sourced ad inventory remained relatively unchanged at 52% during the fourth quarter, and that the level of ad fraud increased over the previous quarter, but still remained better than that of networks and exchanges.
Viewability for display impressions sourced from networks and exchanges, it found, increased from 36.7% in Q3 to 42.6% in Q4. It attributed this to more user attention and/or increased adoption of viewability optimization technology.
Video ads saw increased viewability, jumping nine percentage points to 39%.
“According to Integral’s Year End Survey results published last month, 57 percent of the industry transacted based on viewability in 2014, and even more so — 73 percent — plan to do so this year,” the firm said. “Additionally, 85 percent engaged in programmatic buying, which includes real-time bidding. These activities may have led to an increase in the adoption of viewability measurement technologies by networks and exchanges, as well as optimization of media toward viewability. Perhaps as a result, viewability for display inventory was 42.6 percent in Q4, up from 36.7 percent in Q3. Ad fraud experienced a small uptick from 13.7 percent in Q3 to 14.5 percent in Q4.”
“The fourth quarter also saw video ad viewability increase from 30 percent in Q3 to 39 percent in Q4,” it added. “Not surprisingly, completion rates while in view also rose from 20 percent to 26 percent. Brand risk for video saw a slight increase from 18.7 percent in Q3 to 20.7 percent in Q4, contributing to a noticeable decline in TRAQ, Integral’s overall media quality assessment score. This decline was also likely due to the increased supply of lower quality inventory made available to take advantage of a time when user attention and advertising demand were up.”
Some think native ads are the way to fight low viewability. Adam Rock from Tan Media, a content marketing and native advertising agency, writes, “For advertisers running campaigns across multiple sites and publishers, it is an acknowledged struggle to compare like with like, let alone determine what percentage of ads have been viewed by the target audience. But the issues surrounding low viewability can be solved by utilising the form of true native which, unlike traditional display, can be sold on a guaranteed viewable CPM (vCPM) rate.”
“By working with a network of publishers, and an advanced native ad platform, clients can be assured they will only be charged on a vCPM basis; when the native ad unit or article preview is in-view of the user’s browser,” he says. “And because the content is ad-served rather than manually placed through various publishers’ content management systems (CMS), scale, advanced campaign controls, and performance optimisation can be provided, while capturing ground-breaking consumer attention analytics not previously available to content marketers.”
Viewability is now digital media’s top concern, according to a different (non-sponsored) DigiDay article, which also highlights just how complicated the whole thing is, noting that some can’t even agree on what the actual disagreement is about. As one ad tech company exec said, it’s really about the value of viewability rather than viewability vs. non-viewability. How much is it worth, and will advertisers pay more or demand better for the same prices? Clearly they’re demanding, but the negotiations are going to differ vastly from publisher to publisher based on the capabilities of each.
Either way, this issue isn’t going to go away anytime soon, and publishers should be doing what they can to increase viewability on their end. In some cases this may mean site redesigns. AdExchanger points to some sites, including The New York Times, Time.com, and National Journal, which have implemented redesigns with viewability in mind. Sometimes, it’s as simple as moving banners higher on the page.
Katrin Ribant at Adotas has an interesting article out this week about viewability as currency, which looks at joining data sets, calculating viewability rates, and optimizing toward key performance indicators on viewable media.
The viewability rate for publisher sourced ad inventory remained relatively unchanged at 52% during the fourth quarter, according to a new report from Integral Ad Science. Meanwhile, the level of ad fraud increased over the previous quarter, but still remained better than that of networks and exchanges.
Viewability for display impressions sourced from networks and exchanges, it found, increased from 36.7% in Q3 to 42.6% in Q4. It attributes this to more user attention and/or increased adoption of viewability optimization technology.
Video ads saw increased viewability, jumping nine percentage points to 39%.
“According to Integral’s Year End Survey results published last month, 57 percent of the industry transacted based on viewability in 2014, and even more so — 73 percent — plan to do so this year,” the firm says. “Additionally, 85 percent engaged in programmatic buying, which includes real-time bidding. These activities may have led to an increase in the adoption of viewability measurement technologies by networks and exchanges, as well as optimization of media toward viewability. Perhaps as a result, viewability for display inventory was 42.6 percent in Q4, up from 36.7 percent in Q3. Ad fraud experienced a small uptick from 13.7 percent in Q3 to 14.5 percent in Q4.”
“The fourth quarter also saw video ad viewability increase from 30 percent in Q3 to 39 percent in Q4,” it adds. “Not surprisingly, completion rates while in view also rose from 20 percent to 26 percent. Brand risk for video saw a slight increase from 18.7 percent in Q3 to 20.7 percent in Q4, contributing to a noticeable decline in TRAQ, Integral’s overall media quality assessment score. This decline was also likely due to the increased supply of lower quality inventory made available to take advantage of a time when user attention and advertising demand were up.”
In December, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released its “State of Viewability Transaction 2015″ report aimed at offering guidance on how to manage the “shift of digital media’s ‘audience currency’ to 100 percent viewability.”
It said 100% viewability measurement simply isn’t possible. Instead, it recommends 70% as the best threshold for buyers and sellers. 2015, it says, will be a “year of transition.”
Earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Google made a couple of big advertiser-related announcements. For one, they’ve added over 30 broadcasters, premium publishers, and major brands to Google Partner Select, the premium video service they launched last year. Second, they would roll out viewability reporting across their ad platforms.
Now, they’re building on the viewability efforts by adding viewability targeting in DoubleClick Bid Manager and Viewability data in DoubleClick Ad Exchange bid requests.
DoubleClick Bid Manager clients can measure and target impressions based on historical viewability of an impression. They can improve campaign performance in real time by eliminating the need to manually reallocate spend to find viewable impressions, Google says.
Ad Exchange clients can see historical viewability percentage for each impression when available Programmatic buyers can use this information to influence their decisions before placing bids.
“Viewability reporting has given marketers the data to understand how many of their ads were seen,” says Google. “Now they can use that same data to programmatically increase the viewability of their campaigns. For brands like TalkTalk Telecom Group, using viewability targeting on DoubleClick Bid Manager has driven strong results.”
“TalkTalk Telecom Group, a leading TV, broadband, mobile, and phone provider in the U.K., was eager to boost the viewability of its ads while maintaining costs,” the company adds. “Having already implemented programmatic buying to reach potential customers at the exact moment they’re ready to commit, TalkTalk wanted to then ensure its ads were actually being seen by targeting viewable impressions. To do so, the company deployed DoubleClick Bid Manager with Active View. TalkTalk generated 94% more viewable impressions, increased CTR 133%, and lowered CPC by 40%.”
According to Google, half of ads measured are not viewed.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Google made a couple of big advertiser-related announcements. For one, they’ve added over 30 broadcasters, premium publishers, and major brands to Google Partner Select, the premium video service they launched last year. Second, they’re rolling out viewability reporting across their ad platforms.
The Google Partner Select Marketplace is a programmatic marketplace for connecting publishers who wish to invest in “top-quality” video with brands that want to buy against it. New broadcast and publisher brands include CBS Interactive, Fox News, Discovery, Animal Planet, TLC, HGTV, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Travel Channel, Hearst Television, Rolling Stone, Us Weekly, Men’s Fitness, and PGA Tour. Brand advertisers include Allstate, BMW and Netflix.
“In our early tests, we’ve seen video ads running through Google Partner Select driving significant audience engagement with 74% video ad completion rates, demonstrating that when brands pick the right moments, engagement follows,” says Neal Mohan, Vp of Video and Display Advertising at Google.
Regarding viewability reporting, Google says it will start offering it to all marketers and publishing using the DoubleClick platforms for video campaigns in the coming days. It’s also coming soon to reserved inventory on YouTube, including all of Google Preferred, across desktop and app views.
Eventually (as in the coming months), Google will start offering the ability to target viewable impressions in DoubleClick, and the ability to buy only viewable video impressions across the Google Display Network. Then, later this year, Google says it will report on audibility for video ads and the total amount of time an ad was viewable.
“We’re adhering to the industry definition for video viewability (as set by the MRC and Making Measurement Make Sense): 50% or more of the video being on screen for two seconds or longer,” says Mohan. “Viewability, though, is just the starting point, not an end in and of itself. With the confidence that their ads can be seen by a real person, marketers can then go on to strive for–and measure–what really matters, impact and engagement. Along with our commitment to viewability, we’ll continue our investments in other ways to help marketers drive engagement, like our TrueView format (where advertisers only pay when consumers engage) and Brand Lift surveys, which help marketers measure the impact of their campaigns on their branding goals.”
Google first expressed its aspirations to improve viewability reporting over a year ago. Last month, the Interactive Advertising Bureau released its State of Viewability Transaction 2015 report, which offers guidance on how to manage the “shift of digital media’s audience currency to 100 viewability.” According to that, 100% viewability measurement simply isn’t possible. Instead, it recommends 70% as the best threshold for buyers and sellers. This year, it says, will be a year of transition.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released its “State of Viewability Transaction 2015″ report aimed at offering guidance on how to manage the “shift of digital media’s ‘audience currency’ to 100 percent viewability.”
Right now, it says, 100% viewability measurement simply isn’t possible. Instread, it recommends 70% as the best threshold for buyers and sellers. 2015, it says, will be a “year of transition.”
From the announcement:
The IAB statement heralds the collaboration among the digital trade association, the ANA, and the 4As that has stewarded the historic change in advertising measurement, but labels 2015 a “year of transition,” and calls on advertising agencies, publishers, marketers, and advertising technology companies to work together to assure the new currency can be implemented by all companies in the digital advertising ecosystem. The paper reiterates a statement made in October by the Media Rating Council (MRC), the organization charged by the industry with managing the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) processes, that it is “unreasonable for advertisers, agencies and publishers implementing viewable impressions as measurement currency to expect to observe viewable rates of 100% in analyses of their campaigns.”
“It’s time to set the record straight about what is technically and commercially feasible, in order to get ourselves on an effective road to 100 percent viewability and greater accountability for digital media,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “The MRC said it best – 100 percent is currently unreasonable. Why? Because, different ad units, browsers, ad placements, vendors and measurement methodologies yield wildly different viewability numbers. Publishers, agencies, marketers, and ad tech companies can resolve these differences by working collaboratively to make measurement make sense. We won’t do it by holding guns to each others’ heads.”
The IAB is offering up seven principles, which it says marketers, publishers, and agencies should adhere to:
Billing should be based on served impressions separated into measured and non-measured categories.
Measured Impressions should be held to a 70% viewability threshold.
If a campaign doesn’t achieve 70% for Measured Impressions, publishers should make good with additional Viewable Impressions until the threshold is met.
All make-goods should be in the form of additional Viewable Impressions, not cash, and should be delivered in a reasonable time frame. Make-good impressions should be both Viewable and generally consistent with inventory that was purchased in the original campaign. Determination of threshold achievement is based on total campaign impressions, not by each line item. In other words, some line items may not achieve threshold, but others can compensate.
For large format ads (242,500+ pixels), a Viewable Impression is counted if 30% of the pixels of the ad are viewable for a minimum of one continuous second.
All transactions between buyers and sellers should use MRC accredited vendors only.
A buyer and a seller should agree on a single measurement vendor ahead of time.
Google has introduced for the Google Display network the ability to buy based on viewability in real time across its two million sites. Viewability was previously available for reservations buys on the network, but is now available in the auction on a CPM basis across devices.
This means advertisers can elect to only pay for impressions where their a has a chance to be seen. The option is based on Article View, Google’s Viewability measurement solution.
“Through an algorithmic review of publisher sites, our systems will show ads only in ad slots most likely to be viewable, and you only pay for the ones measured as viewable according to the IAB/3MS standard: 50% of the ad visible on the page for one second or longer,” explains product manager James Beser. “You will also see a report of how many viewable impressions you received for any given campaign, which can help make future campaigns even more effective.”
“As we’ve said before, making viewability a basis for buying, selling and measuring media can help transform the digital marketplace,” says Beser. “With access to more meaningful metrics, brand advertisers can unleash their most creative campaigns, knowing they’ll have a chance to shine. And publishers will be able to more fairly value all of their inventory, not just those spots considered “above-the-fold.’”
Google says it will work with partners on this over the coming months.
