Up To Standard? Marketers Raise Concerns Over Viewability Metrics

The British and American standard is now widely seen as a low benchmark, so when might it be revised and what can marketers do in the meantime?

The Media Rating Council announcement of a viewability metric two years ago was seen as a major step forward. It was almost immediately adopted by IAB U.K. and IAB U.S, while brands and their agencies felt they finally had a metric by which display could be deemed viewable and chargeable.

But two years on, many top marketers are starting to wonder whether half an advert’s pixels appearing on screen for one second (two seconds for video) actually means very much. The U.K. and U.S. standard, which serves as an unofficial guideline in many North and Western European markets, has started to appear a little on the low side. Many senior marketers and their agencies are now starting to openly discuss whether a higher hurdle is needed. Tapping into this sentiment, Telegraph Media Group recently announced that it was selling a proportion of its inventory that is only charged if viewable for 10 seconds. The move follows last year’s announcement by The Economist and FT.com of some inventory being charged on a time-viewed basis.

Raluca Efford, head of digital and social at insurance company Direct Line Group, arguably speaks for many senior digital marketers when she points out that while a single second is not a particularly high benchmark, the bigger issue is whether 50% of an ad’s pixels are sufficient.

“Just imagine watching only the top half of your TV ad. Would it make any sense to you as a consumer?” she asked. “So maybe a time value upwards of two seconds and an in-view percentage upwards of 75% would be getting viewability closer to the right mark. Until a high viewability rate becomes a standard campaign delivery metric, brands will be wasting a lot of money on advertising that never stood a chance to be viewed in the first place.”

Mood Metrics

James Harris, global chief digital officer at Carat, said he always suggests clients search images of neon signs with letters missing to get an idea of how useful a standard of 50% of pixels is in their display campaigns. He believes senior marketers should have two priorities when pushing forward the display metrics agenda—a better viewability standard and a measure of timeliness tied into the consumer’s mindset.

“You’ve got to make a better metric that can actually be delivered by publishers, say 100% viewability offered for a couple of seconds or more, a large proportion of the time, say for 80% of the campaign,” he said.

“That only tells you, of course, your campaign was viewable, but what brands really want to know is they reached the right person at the right time. So we’re putting in a lot of work around emotion, trying to establish someone’s frame of mind by what they’re doing on their PC or mobile device.

“That’s why the Verizon purchase of Yahoo is so interesting. They’re going to have a lot of mobile data about their subscribers, but they’re now also going to have a huge content network which will allow them to discern a customer’s mood by their browsing behaviour and deliver highly targeted advertising based on their frame of mind. We firmly believe emotion is the future of targeting.”

Brand Metrics

Adding some kind of emotional metric sounds promising but, right now, has to be seen as blue sky thinking. On the other hand, Jane Ostler, research agency Millward Brown’s sector managing director for media, digital and BrandZ, pointed out that seemingly old-fashioned brand metrics are still valuable. Measures of “brand awareness,” “favourability,” and “propensity to buy” are very useful for measuring the success of campaign beyond a viewability standard that few, she believes, find to be demanding enough to be wholly useful.

“I’m always surprised that the people who spend all the budget don’t make more fuss about a viewability standard they usually don’t think is high enough,” she said.

“Viewability is still only a hygiene metric. It shows the industry considers your adverts were capable of being viewed but nothing else. It may sound a little traditional but examining your brand metrics before, during, and after a campaign is still a good way of measuring a campaign beyond a viewability standard that is quite rightly constantly under review.”

Measurement Matters

The IAB U.K. understands the concerns levelled against the current viewability standard, but its director of data and programmes, Steve Chester, points out the need to get the technology right first. The ability to measure how much of a display advert has appeared on screen for a specific time is very new, with vendors coming at the issue from different angles. That means technology companies can offer differing viewability rates for the same campaign.

Discrepancies are further pronounced by the complications of measuring display and video on the web, in-app, and on the mobile web.

“It’s the aim of brands, agencies, and publishers to work towards 100% viewability, and so the current standard is almost certainly going to be revised upwards in time,” he said.

“By the end of next year, we’ll have finished the current certification programme, in which vendors can be aligned on how they measure display and video across different devices, and then we’ll be ready to consider a new metric. There’s no point changing the standard until we’re confident it can be measured effectively and consistently by multiple certified vendors.”

Chester also pointed out that once this measurement work was complete, the IAB U.K. would welcome working with IAB Europe to set a new standard across multiple European markets. And he noted there was nothing preventing marketers and their agencies from dealing with publishers to establish a metric that better suits a campaign’s needs, something he sees being echoed in some publishers’ recent moves. If research shows a message is most successful if viewed for several seconds, then that can be the metric by which inventory is bought. It requires the publisher and agency to agree on measurement and, ultimately, will lead to a higher CPM.

Until the end of next year, when the current viewability standard is likely to be up for revision, this is the main route senior marketers will have to explore if they feel a campaign requires more than half a message being exposed for just a second.