5 METHODS TO IMPROVE AD VIEWABILITY

There’s been much debate about viewability, and what percentage of global

media dollars are wasted on ads that no one ever sees. According to the data

in Beckon, average viewability is around 54%, meaning 46 cents of every media

dollar is spent on ads that never even reach a consumer.

Now, viewability can vary depending on several factors—programmatic or

traditionally bought, ad size, country, ad vendor or channel, and so on. Still, given

the $550 billion marketers will spend on global advertising and media in 2018

most marketers agree it’s a problem.

However, few brands are addressing it. In fact, in our 2017 Marketing Truth or

Hype report, Beckon data showed that only 8.5% of brands are even tracking ad

viewability, much less acting on it. Improving viewability can boost media ROI,

and it’s easier than you might think. According to Beckon data, brands that track

viewability alongside their other KPIs and prioritize improvement increased the

viewability of their ads by 27.5% in one year!

If you’re ready to address viewability head-on, these tips and tricks—collected

from leading brands that are optimizing and negotiating their way to better

viewability—are a great place to start.

To be considered “viewable,” online ads must have 50% of its pixels visible to a viewer for at least one second.

1

Partner with a respected third party like Moat, IAS, etc. that audits and tracks the viewability of your online display ads. You’ll

want to integrate your new viewability data with the rest of your spend and performance data so you can see it all side by side.

Pull the data into a marketing intelligence solution like Beckon to see how your ad viewability stacks up.

Now that we have an aggregate platform that allows

us to bring in data from anything, structured in a

meaningful way, we have it, the media agency has it,

and there's accountability to that viewability number

in real time. We can see what viewability rates are

across brands, across either display or video, etc.,

so we can start to address concerns if the numbers

creep up or anything looks alarming.

— Jeff Rasp, Director

US Consumer Health Digital Strategy at Bayer

2

Your agencies should also be able to share viewability

metrics. Many ad publishers report on viewability, but it’s

often left out of the reports shared with brands unless

specifically requested. Encourage your agency to include

viewability data along with your current performance

reports, so that it can becomes part of your routine

analysis and optimization. Keep in mind that agencies and

brands alike are trying to figure out how to get better

viewability from ad publishers, but with transparency and

close collaboration, you can diagnose and address low

viewability together.

In this quick example, we’ve taken a look at viewability

rates by campaign, with an industry benchmark overlaid.

We can quickly spot low performing campaigns, with

significant dips below the industry average. This can spark

deeper conversations with partners and further analysis.

Look at trends over time, or dig deeper to determine what

factors drove low viewability, and then take action.

3

Ask your agency to negotiate make—goods or credits with publishers where you see low viewability. You’re on solid ground in

doing so (remember: you’re paying for it!). Several Beckon clients have successfully recouped investments in low performing ads.

Also, consider renegotiating contracts with media partners based on performance benchmarks so if a media partner falls below a

predetermined viewability threshold, they’ll be required to deliver additional impressions to make up for low viewability.

If a campaign does not achieve the viewability threshold

for Measured Impressions, publishers will make good

with additional Viewable Impressions until the threshold

is met. Such a guarantee ensures that all paid measurable

ad impressions will be viewable at a threshold that both

exceeds the minimum standard and falls within observed

variances. A buyer and a seller should agree on a single

measurement vendor ahead of time. The industry aspires

to variances of no more than 10% between viewability

measures provided by different vendors.

— State of Viewability Transaction 2015, IAB

We [Campbell’s] chose to only contract with

media partners who would contractually agree to

deliver 100% of impressions viewed, which was

definitely controversial back then. Luckily, we

didn't see a big uptick in our CPM because of it.

We do pay a fee for it, but we have managed

[to limit] the CPM increase.

— Marci Raible, VP, Global Media & Marketing Services

Campbell Soup Company

4Once you have viewability data aggregated with performance

data in a trusted marketing intelligence platform, you can

slice and dice down to various levels of granularity, looking

for trends around the ad sizes, placements, types of creative,

and publishers that perform best. Industry reports show that

interactive ads, mobile ads, video ads, in-app ads, and

non-programmatically bought ads generally yield the highest

viewability. Unsurprisingly, it’s also been reported that above-

the-fold ads are viewed 87% longer than below-the-fold ads,

and vertical ad sizes outperform their counterparts. Test to

see if these industry trends hold true for your brand, and

work with your media partners to adjust strategy as needed.

A few stack rankers side-by-side can deliver quick insight

into how various factors contribute to high (or low)

viewability. In this example, we’ve chosen to rank viewability

rate by publisher and ad sizes. In both we can see some big

differences in viewability, so then we rolled up both factors

in a card showing how performance breaks down by ad size

and publisher, over time. This should help with renegotiating

terms and requesting make-goods, maybe even optimizing

out of those partners.

5

Viewability is important, but it’s not the only KPI. Be sure you’re also looking at cost per viewed impression and metrics that measure

outcomes, such as click-through rates and conversion rates. So long as you know what you are setting out to do, and how you’ll

measure success prior to kicking off a campaign or initiative, you’ll see the full impact of your media spend and have a good compass

to evaluate what’s working and what to adjust.

We have some minimum thresholds for viewability that we put

into all of our contracts—some buys written in pen and other buys

that are written in pencil. We optimize weekly to understand if

performance slowdowns are conversion related or based off of

viewability. For e-commerce and direct response marketing,

brand impressions are important, but conversions are what

really matters so viewability becomes a much more secondary

metric. We care about it from a contractual perspective, and we'll

track and optimize against it, but conversions and other metrics

are more heavily weighted. We'll look at all of those metrics, then

decide how to shift media to make sure we're making the most

out of our campaigns.

— Conrad Bowman, Digital Analytics Manager

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company

Though viewability is a hot topic in industry news,

measuring and improving ad viewability is actually

quite simple for most brands, and can greatly improve

the overall ROI of your media buys. Once you’ve

established what’s important at your organization and

reviewed trends in high and low viewability, work with

your media partners to optimize performance together.

We’ve found that most organizations have had great

success teaming up with agencies and partners to see,

understand, and improve performance. But remember,

if a partner is crimping performance and making little

effort to improve, you can always begin anew with

partners who are committed to transparency and

driving business growth.

LEARN MORE

Maximizing the impact of every ad dollar requires closely

tracking performance and collaborating with partners

to optimize across it all. For more tips and tricks on

managing media investments, check out our library

of media transparency, agency partnership, and data

ownership resources.

LET'S CONNECT

Get in touch at hello@beckon.com.