Videology has just made a big step on the road to adopting viewability as the standard currency for buying online ads.
The TV and video ad buying platform announced Tuesday that advertisers using its self-service platform now have the option to buy digital video ads using viewable cost-per-thousand (vCPM) pricing, backed by independent measurement from the buyer’s choice of Moat, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science or Videology’s own MRC-accredited measurement.
The pricing option will be available across programmatic ad exchanges, private marketplaces and automated direct deals negotiated between buyers and publishers on the platform. It includes the option to buy against a guaranteed minimum vCPM and a guaranteed volume of viewable video impressions.
The way CEO Scott Ferber describes it, buyers will activate vCPM through a simple three-step process. First they’ll select vCPM as their pricing model, then they’ll be able to select the definition of viewability they want to use to review inventory. Lastly they’ll choose the viewability provider they want to determine which impressions are showing up on users’ screens.
“Having a viewable impression as a currency by which you transact makes us able to compare digital video to TV much more on a like-forl-like basis,” Ferber told Marketing. “We think that’ll drive convergence… We think by enabling this we’ll increase the spend across digital video and television, because more marketers will trust it and they’ll know what they’re getting.”
Buyers will be able to screen inventory based on either the MRC’s standard definition of a viewable video impression (50% on-screen for 2 consecutive seconds) or GroupM’s much more stringent Extended Viewability standard (100% on-screen for 50% of the ad’s duration, with audio on and user initiation). With either option, the buyer will only pay for ad impressions that meet the standard, and moreover, Videology’s bidding algorithms will optimize towards more viewable inventory.
Ferber said the company’s confident enough in its forecasting and optimization technology to provide guarantees against the price and volume of viewable inventory.
“Most TV planning is done ahead of time, as opposed to the last second – that’s the idea of a plan,” he said. “If you look at it from that perspective, guaranteeing price and volume is really important to that marketplace. So we’re just honouring our heritage, and it’s our ability to leverage our tremendous audience forecasting skills that allows us to offer that guarantee.”
Though it’s been five years since the IAB, 4As and ANA created a joint initiative to install viewable impressions as the basic unit of pricing for online ad transactions, vCPM has yet to become the dominant currency by which ads are bought. That’s in part because publishers who are struggling to monetize web and mobile inventory have been reluctant to charge only for viewable impressions, which for many would mean a significant revenue hit.
Intermediary platforms like Videology have a slight advantage in that regard, since they can target inventory that they predict will be viewable based on historical data. However, they’ve been stymied by disputes over the definition of viewability, differing methods of measurement between vendors, and the difficulty of integrating vendor data into their platforms.
One notable exception, though it’s in display rather than video, is the Google Display Network, which incorporated vCPM as a pricing option in 2013, and in 2015 set vCPM as its default pricing model for all campaigns.
Many platforms, publishers and agencies have adopted a KPI-based approach to measuring viewability, with buyers requiring vendors meet a certain viewability threshold as part of their contracts (for example, requiring a guarantee that 80% of impressions bought be viewable, based on measurement from an agreed-upon vendor). While this incentivizes publishers to make sure their ads are in view, some buyers don’t think it goes far enough, since they are still ultimately paying for unseen ads.
