The majority of video ads played in Canada are viewable, although our viewability still lags behind other countries such as Australia, Germany and South Korea, according to a recent study from Google.
Google found that 61% of all Canadian video ads accessed by its DoubleClick platform in April 2015 were viewable. That puts Canada ahead of the U.S. and the U.K., but behind most other countries studied.
Global video viewability rates. Source: Think with Google
The highest levels of viewability were seen in developing markets like India, Russia and Mexico, likely due to greater mobile usage in those markets. The study found that mobile and tablet video ads are significantly more viewable than those on desktop: 83% on smartphone and 81% on tablet versus 53% on desktop.
Being viewable does not actually mean that an impression was seen, rather that it had an “opportunity to be seen,” according to the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) coalition, which sets the standards for viewable impression measurement.
A video is considered viewable when at least 50% of its pixels appear on a user’s screen and in an active browser tab for at least 2 seconds. This doesn’t guarantee that the user actually watched the ad, just that it was partly visible somewhere on their screen.
Of those ads that weren’t viewable, Google found that only a quarter (24%) were actively abandoned by users after less than two seconds. The vast majority (76%) of non-viewable ads were never in-view at all, either because they played below the fold, in an inactive tab or in a hidden browser window.
Not surprisingly, much of the non-viewable inventory comes from small-player ads that autoplay without an active user signal. This kind of cheap, throwaway inventory also tends to be the most widely available: Google found that 300×250-pixel video made up 33% of all the inventory it looked at, despite having the lowest average viewability rate.
Source: Think with Google
Although some of that inventory likely comes from outright fraud – looping autoplay ads are a favourite of criminal ghost sites – much of it is also likely “white collar fraud,” created by semi-legitimate publishers looking to increase their ad inventory with high-volume, low-impact placements.
The goods news is that the most viewable player, 848×477 pixels, is the second-most-common format. So it doesn’t look like there’s a shortage of quality inventory.
Programmatic suffers lower-than-average viewability
Another study released last week by video ad platform TubeMogul looked specifically at video viewability in programmatic buying. According to the study, viewability for Canadian inventory bought on programmatic video exchanges has risen just two percentage points since Q1 last year, and at 38% remains below the 61% viewability rate for all video.
Over the five quarters that TubeMogul has tracked average viewability, Canada’s average rate has actually fallen from its peak of 45% in Q2 last year, when it held the highest rate of the countries TubeMogul tracks.
Average programmatic video viewability in Canada. Source: TubeMogul Q1 Report
However, TubeMogul found Canada continues to outperform other markets in the actual cost of viewable impressions, largely thanks to low prices on Canadian inventory. According to a week-by-week cost-per-viewable impression analysis, the average cost of 1,000 viewable impressions peaked at CAD$32 in Canada, versus CAD$46 in the U.S. and CAD$55 in the U.K.
Average programmatic viewable cost-per-thousand in Canada. Source: TubeMogul Q1 Report
In other words, Canadian advertisers get more viewable impressions for the dollars they pay – even though a larger fraction of their total digital video buy is going to waste on impressions that viewers can’t see.
Programmatic video grows unabated
The good news is that for programmatic media buyers who have the skills and technology to skim off the most viewable and high-performing inventory, there’s a lot more volume to choose from. On average, 3.2 billion video impressions were available each week through Q1 2015, three times as many as the same quarter last year, according to TubeMogul.
Over the same period, TubeMogul reported mobile video inventory grew 633%, to 287 million weekly impressions, as more publishers and app developers incorporated video and broadened their mobile audience.
TubeMogul also saw publishers selling much more inventory via its programmatic direct channel, BrandAccess, which now posts some 3.5 million impressions each week, compared to less than 100,000 in Q1 last year. Through programmatic direct, buyers can circumvent the exchanges and buy directly from known publishers, using programmatic targeting tools to selectively purchase premium impressions. Although the quality tends to be higher, prices are as well.
