The debate over viewability rages on; and, if you’ve been around AdMonsters lately, you know there are quite a few views on viewable impressions. Our U.S. Editor, Gavin Dunaway, dove into the viewability fray at a viewability panel discussion at Digital Brand Forum in New York a couple weeks ago, where metrics and standardization were big topics.
“It’s easy to get behind – viewability has a lot of momentum right now,” Yieldex Cofounder and CSO Tom Shields said during the panel discussion. “But the technology does not currently exist to measure viewability consistently. In addition, none of the solutions agree with each other.”
While major viewability adoption is still far out, Havas Media’s Chris Swarbrick believes the viewable impressions horizon may be closer than many think — but, standardization is key.
“These difficulties in reaching agreement over what should be counted, how, and what should be done as a result will mean that ad visbility will probably continue to be debated this year,” Swarbrick said in a recent feature for AdMonsters. “But, [it] won’t become a component of most online display campaigns as many will want to see more standardisation before accepting it.”
At our Publisher Forum in Sonoma (March 3-6), we’ll have GLAM Media’s Vice President of Global Operations & Systems Wendy Mazzoni on hand to discuss various arguments on, and evaluations of, viewability.
While the outcome of viewability is far out into the future, the debate over its utility (or futility) is heating up with fervor. Companies like Adap.tv and Undertone are already promising certifiable impressions, luring publishers who are enthusiastic about guaranteed impressions.
“The industry is taking too long and brands want solutions,” Undertone co-founder Eric Franchi told Adweek. Franchi’s Undertone will begin essentially guaranteeing that its ad network will garner better results on publisher sites than typical viewability benchmarks, using DoubleVerify and Moat to collect viewability data.
While digital advertisers and publishers continue to ride the viewability back-and-forth, digital-video ad company Adap.tv is all in. The online video ad company introduced what it calls ‘Certified Viewability,’ a new feature that allows video ads to be independently verified in real-time, ignoring unseen impressions.
Digital ad platform OnScroll is also one of the several parties leading the pro-viewability charge. Here’s the company’s latest schnazzy infographic, illustratively explaining (and, quite ‘gung-ho’ if we may add) just how publishers can benefit from server-based impression to viewable impressions.
Scroll away, my friends.