What Is Ad Viewability?
Ad viewability is a relatively new term in digital advertising, but it’s been a hot topic after a comScore analysis revealed that 54 percent of display advertisements aren’t viewed despite marketers paying for them.
Ad networks prioritized the number of ads served rather than the number of ads watched in the early days of Internet advertising, and the metrics reported on ad campaigns were generally based on the number of ads served.
Marketers would divide the number of ads displayed by the number of clicks to determine the relative performance of a campaign. The clickthrough ratio, or CTR, became the definitive digital advertising metric as a result of this.
Over time as online advertising matured, however, advertisers began to question the practice of using ads served as a proxy for ads viewed.
How to improve Ad Impressions/ Viewable Impressions
In this article, I’m going to give insight on the secret behind viewable Impression for your Ads. Ad viewability also improves through good design principles: a clear visual hierarchy, symmetry, pleasing proportions, white space and clean design.
Publishers can also make their sites mobile-friendly by using responsive templates that resize according to the device it is being viewed upon. This guarantees a good user experience no matter the device (tablet, phone or desktop) and has become an industry standard.
Another key consideration for ad viewability is speed. Sites that are laden with ads from multiple ad networks can typically take a long time to load, which can result in a lower ad viewability as users click away before the ads load. Techniques for speeding up ad delivery can greatly improve ad viewability.
You end up losing your money and that’s the reason most of the advertisers started bidding for viewable CPM
What is the Viewable Impression?
A viewable impression is a standard measure of ad viewability defined by the International Advertising Bureau (IAB) to be an ad that appears at least 50% on screen for more than one second.
What is the Viewability Rate?
Viewability Rate is a new advertising metric that defines how many ad impressions on a site are viewed by users.
Now we understood how important is to get the ads to appear in the viewable region.
Factors which affect the viewability of the ads on the screen.
Publishers Viewability Situation
Average Publisher viewability rate is just 50.2 %
What Factors affect the viewability on a Page?
- Web design; Layout of the website, UI & UX
- User interaction with content: Content Quality & Content Engagement
- User interaction across devices: Website Responsiveness
- Number of ads on page: Too many Ads will also impact the visibility of the ad
- Technology issues: If the website built on a technology which is not browser friendly
- User behavior; how users are behaving your website
- Platform (i.e., use of JavaScript or legacy pixels)
- Vendor Variation; too many ad vendors
Position of the Ad on the page
The best place where the ad gets most viewability is the place just above the FOLD
Ad size
Vertical Ad units get the maximum views
All above the fold not equals Always Viewable
Not all above the fold is viewable, just below the fold are also viewable. Here is the comparison of the above the fold and below the fold ad viewability comparison
Ad viewability varies across the Industry.
Web page content which can hold the user’s attention has the highest Ad visibility. Refer the chart for the websites of various content types and their visibility score.
Now you have got to know the major factors which can impact your ad visibility, so when bidding for the ads placement or direct media buying keep these in the mind and opt for the bidding.
Follow these guidelines in mind and do your display ads and do share your feedback with us.
Happy Adverting!
