Recent benchmarks have stated average online display and video viewability rates are less than 50% (37.7% and 44% respectively according to comScore and Vindico). This is shocking when you calculate this percentage against last year’s display and video spend which was £1,862 billion in the UK (according to the IAB UK / PwC). This calculation is an overly simplified approached, but let’s say it could be true - that means £1.1 billion of display and video advertising never had the opportunity to be seen. This figure does not account for bot traffic or brand safety issues, which also need to be addressed.

Not surprisingly, several media owners, agencies, and aggregators seem to be frozen, paralyzed by uncertainty with the recent developments on ‘viewability.’ Right now, this is a bigger topic than ever since the MRC has lifted their advisory that previously warned advertisers against using this metric as a trading currency for online display advertising (with video coming soon). In some cases this uncertainty has come from fear of lost revenue/profitability and lack of trust in technology, measurement and/or media partnerships.

However, there is one thing for certain – the ongoing industry discussions surrounding ad viewability are not going away any time soon. Uncertainty will only slow down the process of addressing viewability, so rather than waiting until your clients asks, there is an opportunity to create a few milestones to help embrace this type of measurement, but also look at the full treatment of the ad placements. Full ad treatment provides richer insights such as viewability, site context, geo targeting, and fraud detection (non-human traffic).

So how can you decrease uncertainty and get started today with addressing viewability and ad verification as a trading currency for display and get ahead with video? What are the potential next milestones to put you on the right path? These are questions you may ask yourself - I certainly have.

Decreasing uncertainty:

First, we need to remember that media owners, brands, agencies, and aggregators have been purchasing display and video inventory for over a decade not knowing if 37%, 44%, 50% or 75% of the ads had the opportunity to be seen. The current inventory prices across the market reflect this unknown. I’m not saying this is right, but it is a fact. Second, viewability is an important metric to monitor but not the only metric as this can impact better return for brands and advertisers. This increase in measurement, accountability, and performance can lead to more opportunity for those who can meet these demands.

Finally, to enhance near term and long term campaign sales impact, we as an industry now have (much better) tools to further monitor inventory with a higher degree of accuracy and action the full treatment of how ads are delivered and presented to people online. This way of buying video and display will clarify what’s important when looking at campaign performance and help develop your own approach when developing a plan for viewability and ad verification based on the set campaign objectives. To help, I have provided four milestones that might decrease uncertainly and create momentum to get started on addressing the full treatment of ad placements.

Steps to creating a plan and building momentum:

Initial milestone - Limit your risk

  • Meeting with multiple vendors who can provide both viewable impressions and ad verifications capabilities. This will give you a sense of the market and confidence on who can delivery on both capabilities as they each play a role in ad treatment. It’s a plus if your current ad server can provide these additional capabilities as it will help with impression counting and billings.

  • Experiment with at least two technology partners to compare results, usability and service.

  • Test at the campaign level to get a clear picture on the results and control costs/resources for these tests before determining a long term strategy.

  • Select the right campaigns to test based on set objectives.

  • Evaluate findings and set next near-term objectives to further shape your strategy.

Next milestone - Setting the plan

  • Develop a practice to articulate objectives and expectations for viewability and ad verification with partners.
     
  • Understand the parallels of campaign objectives and then define attribution model to measure campaign performance (you may notice no correlation with viewability to conversions, but an increase on engagement rates such as view-through rates for video or mouse over for display).

  • Communication is key when validating viewability results and sharing the data with partners to improve the results against the campaign goals and objectives.

  • Consistently measure and monitor the data to ensure accurate and effective adjustments are made to continue to improve performance.

  • Create a post-campaign process to evaluate how the campaign did against campaign objectives and why.
     
  • Confirm performance and billing figures as this will impact client results.

Third Milestone - Selecting a viewability partner

There are a lot of articles that talk about the criteria when selecting a vendor, but here are the key things to consider:

Do make sure the vendor can:

  • Easily integrate alongside your ad server for display and/or video

  • Combine capabilities for viewability, player size (for video), site context, geo-targeting, and fraud detection

  • Report on 100% of campaign impressions

  • Provide easy to understand and actionable insights (pre/post ad delivery)

Fourth Milestone - Getting started

I have found the hardest part is getting started, but once you develop the plan for viewability and ad verification then it becomes much clearer. I have also found that a clearer plan presents a point of view which can get people and tasks moving forward more quickly and can lead to greater momentum. More importantly, once started you will be in a position to deliver more value to clients which will open up more business opportunities when done right.

 

By Paul Oronoz, UK Country Manager for Specific Media. 

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