Who could argue with the notion that advertisers shouldn’t be charged for an ad unless someone actually views it?
That’s the logic behind today’s announcement of the blessing by an ad industry group of a new standard for viewable ad impressions. The Media Rating Council, which had been studying how to ensure consistent measurement of viewable impressions, today lifted a moratorium it had placed on the metric way back in November 2012 while it examined how to ensure the many ratings firms out there could come up with similar metrics using their various methods of calculating viewability.
The move does make sense, especially for the brand advertisers that have been keeping most of their budgets in television to date. It’s now widely known that at least a third and maybe more than half of online ads are never seen for a variety of reasons, from the ad appearing off the visible part of a screen to outright fraud, such as embedding an ad behind a pixel so it can’t be viewed but gets counted as an “impression.”
That couldn’t last, though it sure lasted many years longer than it should have. The new standard suggests that online ads can be credibly included on the same ad buyer spreadsheet as TV ads. “Practically speaking, it means that—as of today—for brand advertising, agencies can and will expect guarantees on viewable display impressions, with video to come soon after,” Sherrill Mane, senior VP of research, analytics and measurement at the online ad industry trade group IAB, said in a blog post. “This means that one of the major obstacles to being included in brand allocations has finally been removed.”
What’s still absurd about the situation is the appallingly low standard for viewability. …
Robert Hof 