Viewability: The Great Display debate!

Viewability: The Great Display debate!

Everyone has been talking about moving to viewable impressions for years. If it happens in 2016 then the oldest model of buying and selling impressions Cost Per Thousand impressions (CPM) will get replaced by viewable Cost Per Thousand impressions (vCPM). It will add lot of value for brand and advertisers as it will add more transparency and protection for brands from wasting money.

Currently around half of display ad impressions can’t be seen, which has been a cause for concern among online advertisers who are not sure they’re getting fair deal out of their advertising $$$. Viewability is quickly becoming an important metric for checking campaign performance and the value of online advertising, since an ad that isn’t seen has no value. They will neither ad to CTR nor CPL etc. So buyers want to purchase only viewable impressions. But currently the advertising model is such that buyers does not have a choice. They have to buy impressions which is of no use to them. But in past one year tolla and techniques have been build around the world to measure the viewablility. So before digging deeper into vewability lets see what does viewablility actually stands for?

IAB defines a “viewable” impression as one that's at least 50 percent visible for at least 1 second. But its scary for many publishers because they will loose the revenue coming out of BTF ad slots. And BTF ad slots generally contributes to 50% of their revenue. Publishers can only overcome this loss by either taking these BTF ad slots under viewable range or either by increasing the cost of ATF slot by double. But increasing the rate will not guarantee flow of deals. And even advertisers might refuse to pay higher cost of the ad slots which he has been purchasing at lower rates. And also taking BTF ad slots under viewable range might lead to loss of users. So publishers will need to rethink and redesign their strategy and website too.

The major advertising giants like Google and Facebook have started to offer their customers the ability to pay only when their ads become viewable. So its high time for publishers to start thinking about viewability. As majority of their advertising $$ comes via Google and Facebook. Also all other DSP'S have also started to pay higher $$ if viewability score is being passed. MRC has been evaluating and accrediting the viewability technologies of ad tech firms and has approved 11 vendors: RealVu, comScore vCE-Validation, DoubleVerify, Google Active View, spider.io, Integral Ad Science, Alenty, Sizmek, Moat, WebSpectator for Publishers and Glam Media.So if publishers can have tie up with any of these vendors then they pass viewability score for each and every impression. Publishers can use this viewability score and pass this score to DSP'S in the bid request. It will help DSP'S to evaluate the viewability state of impressions being bought. And DSP'S tends to pay higher ecpm's if viewability score is being passed in bid request being send to them.

Despite of so many efforts from MRC and IAB we are no where close to implementing vCPM model of buying and selling impressions. Below are the main reasons due to which vCPM model does not seems to be existing in near future.

1. Lack of consistency around what a “viewable impression” actually is and what technology could measure its viewability.
2. Vendors offering viewability solutions use various different methods and technologies to establish whether impressions meet those criteria or not.
3. Wide discrepancies between vendors.

Viewability is the common denominator that will solve these negative practices in the Programmatic industry. Transacting on viewable impressions will surely influence marketers to spend more advertising $$ on digital advertising.