Viewability has been a topic on the lips of every marketer over the last few years.
Whilst it has always been very hard for media buyers to prove viewability rates across different media, it is display and programmatic that has made it one of the industries largest topics, simply because we can now measure it accurately.
According to the MRC, for an online advert to be determined as viewable, 50% of the pixels must be on the screen for at least 1 second. For some advertisers this isn’t enough. And now a number of buying technologies will allow for custom viewability measurement – allowing advertisers to measure the number of adverts that were 75% on screen for at least three seconds, for example.
Using the MRC definition, it is reported that viewability of programmatic adverts could be as low as 40%. But this varies considerably by market:
Tips to help get the right level of viewability:
Factor viewability into your CPMs
- Higher CPMs for highly viewable inventory is already a reality. Advertisers can sometimes buy a higher absolute number of viewable impressions by buying cheaper inventory that has a lower overall viewability rate. Always aim for the highest number of in-view adverts for the money you have, not an overall viewability percentage. This is true for both performance and branding campaigns
Evaluate the efficiency of private marketplaces (PMPs) over open exchanges
- As the above point revealed, high viewability commands higher prices. You may be more efficient buying more impressions at a lower viewability on the open exchange
Tie viewability to actions, rather than measuring overall campaign percentages
- Instead of just looking at overall viewability for performance campaigns, viewability should always be tied to activity. That means instead of looking at Cost Per Acquisition, you should ignore all conversions from an unviewed impression and report on a vCPA basis. The same goes for CPM & ROI.
