Ad Viewability

The IAB UK defines viewability as

It is important to note that, if an ad is viewable, it doesn’t guarantee that an ad was seen by a consumer - in the same way that you cannot guarantee someone sees an OOH ad when they walk past a billboard.

How is viewability measured?

A viewable impression indicates that a display ad was viewable when served. More specifically, the IAB and MRC define a viewable impression as one that’s at least 50% visible for at least one second.

To be more specific, viewability is a metric that determines if at least half of a display ad has the chance to be seen in the viewable portion of a browser window for at least one continuous second.

Why is viewability so important?

With a lot of ads not getting viewed by real users, millions of dollars can be wasted in an advertisers budget. This results in poor CPMs for publishers and less ROI for the advertiser.

Since its launch in 2010, viewability has been an essential KPI for advertisers.

Consider the vast number of users who encounter ads on a daily basis. However, it is important to question how many of them truly remember seeing the ads rather than simply being served with them. It is possible that an ad loads at the bottom of a page where a user never scrolls, resulting in the ad going unnoticed and unviewed.

• Viewability has become a crucial metric of success for ad campaigns and the industry is seeing an uplift in more campaigns being booked for viewable impressions.
• Viewability is helping marketers reach their users effectively while publishers who have a higher viewability see improvements in CPMs
  
  

How will higher viewability benefit my site?

Highly viewable ad inventory commands greater CPMs with advertisers willing to pay premium rates to secure high-impact placements. Optimizing your site for highly viewable ads will therefore lead to greater revenue from monetized page views.

What are the best practices for viewability?

There are a few ways to optimize towards better viewability on your site: 

• Lazy loading. Lazy loading is a method where an ad is only served when the placement is in view. This means that if the ad is below the fold it won't be served until the user starts scrolling and triggers the ad serving. (Lazy Load)
• Ad Placement. Making sure that ad placements are positioned correctly on the page. We recommend 3 ads per viewport on Desktop and 2 on Mobile as an ideal layout. To achieve this, we recommend understanding your user behaviour and site layout to determine ad placements which will have a higher chance of being viewable for more than 1 second.
• Ad Size: Taller ad sizes tend to have the highest viewability. Look for opportunities to run higher viewability sizes with high CPMs. We suggest 300x600, 970x250, 336x280, 160x600 on Desktop and 300x250, 336x280 on Mobile.
• Page Optimization: Ensure optimal UX with device-optimized pages, responsive design, page speed, and implementing asynchronous and lazy loading when applicable. 
• Responsive layouts: create mobile-optimized sites to ensure ads are displayed correctly across varying screen sizes.

So what viewability should you aim for?

Ideally, your site viewability should be 80% +

Best Practices:

Optimize for ad placement: The position of the ad is strongly correlated with its viewability. The most viewable position for an ad is right above the fold, not at the top of the page. But that doesn’t mean below-the-fold placements are a complete waste. Content that holds a user’s attention yield the highest viewability.

Optimize for Device type: Your ad layout should be device specific and responsive. Having a Mobile Web and a Desktop layout should be the bare minimum but if you have engaged users on Connected TV or on tablet, do consider developing a layout that compliments these screen sizes.

Optimize for Content Speed: For websites that have a lot of traffic from regions where internet connectivity is poor or where you do not have local content hosting, we recommend utilizing modern web tools to improve speed as well as a lighter monetization stacks such as AMP.

Do not Hide ads: If you are struggling with ad implementation or are concerned about the ad sizes on various screens, please speak to your Venatus team. But to ensure the ad viewability remains high, do not hide ads on device categories. These hidden ad units can still serve on the page but will not be viewable resulting in an overall drop in viewability score and CPM, not to mention Policy Violations.

Lazy loading: At Venatus, we have lazy loading and delayed bidding enabled by default. This ensures ads are only requested once the page is stable and only served when they are in the viewport. This results in higher viewability and improved CPMs.

Variable Refresh: Refreshing ad placements is a great way to build incremental revenues while maintaining the number of ad placements on the page. There are, however, policies in place to ensure ad refresh is not used as a "one size fits all monetization" solution.

While this is not the only list you should follow, in our experience, these are some basic measures a publisher can take and ensure their ad monetization partners are following, when it comes to viewability.

Reach out to your Venatus team for more insights around Lazy loading, responsive ads, variable refresh and how we can help you improve these metrics. At Venatus, we work with some of the most premium brands and advertisers and bring them closer to our network of publishers. To learn more reach out to us via market@venatus.com.