THE ARGUMENT IN BRIEF
Anil revisits the basic condition for digital advertising to work: people must have a chance to see the ad. The piece looks at why served impressions and viewable impressions deserve different treatment.
Viewability has become one of the most focused and hotly debated topics in digital advertising in the last few years.You will encounter more than 200000 search results in Google on this topic.
I would like to keep it short and just stress on few points:
- Users exposed to Viewable impressions convert at an 8-9% greater rate than users who are exposed to impressions not measured as viewable
- Contrary to intuition studies have shown that sites which have almost 100% viewable inventory are the worst performing sites in the programmatic ecosystem
- Debates are on even with respect to the MRC's viewability standards.A large grey area exists in Viewability and some top Global Brands are just busy redefining the viewability standards that (they perceive) suit their brands.
- The biggest question is that while measuring viewability makes sense from the advertisers perspective,there is lack of understanding on how one should be reacting to the viewability numbers in absence of clear cut benchmarks ( owing to ever changing standards and each advertiser defining it in his own way).
Viwability does impact performance but it cannot be compared with other dimensions'lift such as behavioural data or site/context data.I feel viewability is more foundational in nature to enable all other performance parametrs to catalyst a campaign.
In India, I am personally happy that at least the discussion has started with few of the more evolved advertisers/brands already adopting it as an important metric to watch out for.I think advertisers should move beyond basic metrics of impressions/click/CTR and start looking at Viewability also to measure the actual quality of Media Buys happening and how it can be bettered month on month.I think there are brands who are even thinking of paying on Viewable impressions since a non Viewable impression does not have any value either for the user or the advertiser/brand.
Ignorance might have been bliss till now but lets make it even more blissful by taking control of what we are buying and paying for.
tools
FROM THE AUTHOR’S ARCHIVE
Original text from Anil Pandit’s article export. Claims and references reflect the time of writing.
The export does not record a publication date; the creation date is shown above.
What does this mean for your business?
Bring the question into a focused advisory conversation.
Work with Anil ↗