This article appears today on iMedia Connection and is written by Eric Picard, VP of product planning for omni-channel media, MediaMath. Co-author Mike Monaco is MediaMath’s vice president of programmatic strategy and optimization, and co-author Ari Buchalter is president of technology at the company.
An advertisement — whether it’s a banner ad, video pre-roll, mobile pop-up, or anything else — needs to be viewed by a consumer for it to be valuable for the company placing the ad. But does that mean advertisers should only pay for ads that are “viewable”? The answer is complicated.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) defines a viewable ad as at least 50 percent in-view for at least one second. Even with a standard in place, vendors measuring performance use their own proprietary means for calculating “viewability” scores. Despite commonalities, no two vendors net the same score. It’s up to advertisers, agencies, and their ad-tech partners to determine which viewability vendors are providing the most accurate score. These scores are not just important post-ad placement. In the programmatic space, knowing in advance if the ad is viewable is key. Vendors have rolled out pre-bid viewability targeting as a result, and programmatic buying platforms should have this capability.
Viewability is not an issue for advertisers and ad-tech companies to solve alone. Publishers are reacting to the demand for more viewable inventory. Some are redesigning their websites to promise higher numbers of ads in view, even guaranteeing viewable space.
Should advertisers only buy from exchanges or publishers guaranteeing viewable inventory? Of course not, and especially not in programmatic buying. Viewability is only part of the equation in making a decision of when and where to place an ad. If you have a segment of highly responsive users, like shopping cart “abandoners,” it might still be a high-value ad buy even if the viewability score is not at 100 percent. You risk missing a potential convertor, and possibly at a lower CPM, for the sake of one metric like viewability.
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