The Road to 100% Viewability in Display Advertising, from Force Marketing.
Display advertising, by its very nature, is only valuable if it’s properly displayed. This is a metric that the industry refers to as “viewability.”
What is viewability?
Viewability is loosely defined as how easily users can view an advertisement– or not view it, as the case may be.
There is a more technical definition, however. The industry standard as developed under the leadership of the Media Ratings Council (MRC) calls for desktop display ads to be considered viewable if 50 percent of their pixels are in view for a minimum of one second, and for desktop video ads to be considered viewable if 50 percent of their pixels are in view for two seconds. For larger desktop ad units, 30 percent of pixels in view for one second constitutes a viewable ad.
If those conditions are met by a display advertisement, then that ad is considered viewable. That’s often accomplished by bidding on “above-the-fold” ad placements, meaning ads will be shown on a user’s screen without the need to scroll.
Why is viewability so important?
In testing, Google found that the conversion rates on viewable ads improved by up to 50 percent. “These viewable ads, with a minimum of 50% in view for a minimum of one second, drove a brand lift of 10.3% while non-viewable ads didn’t contribute to lift at all,” according to Neal Mohan, Google’s Vice President of Display and Video Advertising. Viewability matters when it comes to digital ad success.
