Impressions vs reality: Are your digital ads being seen?

While the technical definition of viewability is still being debated within the industry, it is increasingly clear to many that poor viewability – the opportunity for a served impression to be seen— is bad business for everyone. Not only does the client fail to advance their business aims, the advertising industry shrinks a little every time a client loses faith in this industry.Evidently, the wrong solution to this problem is to wait for an industry consensus to emerge before enforcing better viewability. Marketers and agencies should act now to ensure that advertising budgets are spent on better ad spaces on the internet:1. Select inventory with rated viewabilityProgrammatic trading desks can select inventory by ad positions or with predicted viewability levels. While the pool of rated inventory will be restrictive and costs will increase, everyone will have more assurance that ads can be seen by genuine users.Currently, it is the industry organisations in more mature programmatic markets like the United States and the United Kingdom that have led the standardisation efforts on viewability definitions. They have helped to popularise the notion that viewability is having fifty percent of an advertisement in a viewable portion of a browser for a continuous one second. However imperfect this definition is, having some form of measure is better than none at all.2. Evaluate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) wiselyThe choice of KPIs affect optimisation strategies and decision-making. When chosen correctly, it can be an insightful metric for the effectiveness of a campaign. If chosen wrongly, it becomes an off-the-mark distraction.A common concern is that the cost of viewable impressions is higher than the regular cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM). However, that is not an apples to apples comparison since the latter does not account for viewability. Until viewability becomes the industry norm, it would be important to specify that the KPI should include only viewable impressions, and then to compare performances based on similar inventory.3. Curate the sites on which the ads are servedServing ads across the network can be a cost-effective way of reaching a mass audience and finding new potential user segments. Site reports can then be run to show where the ads have been served and clicked. A quick visit to each site on that list should also provide a cognitive gauge of the viewability of the ad spaces available.Conscientiously keeping track of effective sites will result in a curated list of sites with some measure of demonstrated viewability. While this may sound laborious, complementary systems can be established to simplify the process. For that reason, Amnet has set up an in-house site measurement system that is based on actual campaign performance. This, along with viewability reports from third party partners, provides a good alternative reference to publisher self-assessments of their own inventory.Ultimately, an ad has to be visible to even exist. While many other factors contribute to whether audiences move from looking over to seeing the ads, getting better ad spaces is already half the battle won.The writer is Anna Chan, managing director of Amnet Asia, the programmatic trading desk of Dentsu Aegis Network.