Most online display ads (54%) don’t meet the IAB’s standards of viewability, according to recently released comScore campaign tracking statistics. This means the majority of display impressions are less than 50% on-screen or show up on-screen for less than a second, so no human being had an opportunity to see them.
comScore’s new viewability benchmark study, which tallied scores across 290 billion impressions in thousands of online campaigns, found that viewability rates differ substantially between premium and non-premium inventory: premium sites had a median in-view rate of 53%, compared to only 31% for networks and exchanges.
For the purposes of the study, comScore defined “premium” impressions as inventory that costs $5 or more per CPM, even though viewability is not a guarantee the ad has been seen; viewers can still ignore or skip ads that count as viewable, which likely means far fewer than half of premium impressions are actually making it through to consumers.
Though the study paints a bleak picture in broad strokes, it did find that individual premium publishers are performing well. The highest-scoring premium sites had viewability rates above 80%, while the lowest had viewability below 10%. Exchanges and networks meanwhile fell between 5% and 65% viewable, all the more reason to judge publishers individually, rather than on market performance.
Since last fall, comScore has been promoting its vCE (validated campaign essentials) as one of the only measurements services on the market that helps advertisers and agencies determine which publishers are making the cut when it comes to viewability.
It should be noted, though, that comScore’s research stats aren’t comprehensive. A few big-name publishers won’t play ball with its measurement service, Google being the most notable. Another limitation is that a lot of ads don’t support comScore viewability measurement, so those impressions weren’t included in the count.
Still, it’s clear that a large proportion of ad impressions aren’t getting to consumers, which is something marketers should be aware of when considering digital media buys. It’s also strong motivation to find a new currency for digital buying — advertisers want to buy views, not impressions that may or may not turn into views, and any publisher that can find a way to monetize the former will get a major advantage in the market.
