By solely focusing on viewability, we might be damaging a campaign’s chances of real success, writes Steve Doyle
The development of online advertising measurement continues to advance at interesting, polarising and sometimes frustrating speeds.
The consensus that processes need to be more transparent, inventory more viewable and measurement more robust is strong, but the reality of advanced thinking in these areas taking hold on mainstream media planning is, to date, limited.
The inclination is still to optimise towards the lowest common denominator: historically CTR, but for brand advertising to continue to grow in digital, the value of measurement beyond this LCD is of paramount importance.
The recent Meetrics study which stated that UK advertisers wasted over £600m on non-viewable ads last year, with over half of all ads served failing to meet the IAB’s viewability standards, made it clear that the current state of viewable advertising is not good enough.
We’ve established that the industry has hoisted itself by its own petard: prices have dropped and revenue remains under threat. More, smaller ads are on the page, or popping up to obscure the page, trying to get their moment in the sun, but fewer than half get an opportunity to be seen.
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Measurement companies making headline-grabbing statements about the amount of money being “wasted” (which, in the spirit of Brexit, they might have put on the side of a bus), isn’t particularly helpful. It doesn’t tell advertisers how effective the advertising they bought was (in conjunction with that which wasn’t), nor how that indexed into their overall considerations when assessing the success of a media plan.
For example, one advertiser who attended one of our events last year said (under Chatham House Rule) that they are happy to buy plenty of standard inventory with poor viewability scores for direct response campaigns, because the media is so cheap that it’s considered ‘effective enough’ to deliver for them.
So in this case, saying everything that is not viewable is wasted is incorrect. It’s akin to saying that shower water that misses you is wasted water, and ignores the level of investment in the shower head, and the fact that the shower did its job – you came out clean.
By solely focusing on, or optimising towards, viewability, we might be damaging our campaigns’ chances of real success. By which I mean success against their actual objectives, which I dare say lie more in the realms of increasing awareness and purchase intent (or in our friend’s case, economical traffic), as opposed to being the most viewable campaign ever.
We need to recognise that viewability is only a gatekeeper, which demonstrates an ad had a chance to be seen. An old school TV metric – OTS! – which doesn’t give an advertiser any insight whatsoever on whether that ad then went on to make an impact. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: viewability is a measure of efficiency, an entry point to the brand-consumer interaction, not in itself an indicator of campaign effectiveness or consumer engagement.
A focus on demonstrating value via effectiveness would be a far more constructive way of progressing the debate”
Bemoaning wastage is counter productive and scares people. What we are presented with is lots of people pointing fingers at each other – stating the obvious about how bad things are, without presenting a clear vision for improvement.
Yes, standards should be improved, and measurement and accountability need cleaning up. Although the recent stance of P&G’s Marc Pritchard will no doubt accelerate things somewhat, this isn’t happening quickly enough.
A focus on demonstrating value via effectiveness would be a far more constructive way of progressing the debate.
Adhesion to the current viewability standards, which for better or worse, are currently the MRC’s recommendation, needs to become the norm, as does third-party verification. That’s a given. The most basic of requirements.
In my opinion, in-view time needs to become a much more important metric. According to visual measurement platform Sticky (that has conducted studies with over 500,000 participants worldwide), the average amount of time required for branding to visually engage and register is 0.2 seconds.
Further research into this area is needed to find optimum time in view for brand and message association of varying complexity to be absorbed, but this will already tell a much more interesting story than simply – did it have a chance to be seen? – and offer actionable insight into how display campaigns need to be optimised to achieve their goal of effective message conveyance.
Beyond viewability, webcam-based eye tracking can offer substantial pre-campaign insight into a creative’s potential for visual engagement, and therefore campaign effectiveness.
Hopefully headline grabbing will not triumph over common sense. Our research will continue to push thinking towards the value of brand building online.
Steve Doyle is chief commercial officer at InSkin Media
