According to the recently published IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, internet advertising revenue in the US grew 19 per cent to $27.5bn during the first six months of 2015. While this healthy growth is surely good news for industry players, advertisers are becoming more and more concerned about whether they are getting a good return on their investment and are demanding better accountability for ad viewability and measurement.
A November 2014 report by Google titled The Importance of Being Seen: Viewability Insights for Digital Marketers and Publishers, highlighted why this is a key issue for digital advertisers today. Their research shows that 51.6 per cent of ad impressions are not seen. On average, publishers have 50 per cent viewability rates, but some publishers have much lower viewability. The problem is even more severe for video ads which are generally more expensive than static image ads. The Google study found that just 54 per cent of video ads across the web are viewable.
Making sure online ads are viewable
In an attempt to provide parameters and best practices, this year IAB is recommending that 70 per cent of a campaign’s impressions should meet the minimum standard viewability definition of 50 per cent of the ad in view for at least 1 second.
Clearly, neither advertisers nor publishers can control whether ads will be watched by online audiences, but more and more advertisers are starting to demand they only pay for ads that can be seen. Typically, some percent of ads are not viewable because they are displayed or playing in the background while users look at something else, according to the Google study. Furthermore, Google found 76 per cent of unviewable ads were in a background tab or never on-screen at all, while the remaining 24 per cent were scrolled off-screen or abandoned in less than a second.
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