If you’re a brand marketer, you’ve probably heard buzz about ad viewability in industry publications for a few years. What percentage of ads are viewable, what agencies, publishers and media partners are doing to address low viewability, how it’s reported on, and so on. And while most of us agree it’s a problem, there’s been minimal discussion around how brands are addressing viewability, if at all. In fact, a recent Beckon report found that only 8% of brands are currently tracking viewability as a routine part of media reporting. If you’re responsible for managing media investments at your organization, this guide is a must-read. It’s packed with quotes, stats, and sample visualizations to help ensure that every dollar spent is driving optimal impact.

1. 5 METHODS TO IMPROVE AD VIEWABILITY

2. There’s been much debate about viewability, and what percentage of global
media dollars are wasted on ads that no one ever sees. According to the data
in Beckon, average viewability is around 54%, meaning 46 cents of every media
dollar is spent on ads that never even reach a consumer.
Now, viewability can vary depending on several factors—programmatic or
traditionally bought, ad size, country, ad vendor or channel, and so on. Still, given
the $550 billion marketers will spend on global advertising and media in 2018
most marketers agree it’s a problem.
However, few brands are addressing it. In fact, in our 2017 Marketing Truth or
Hype report, Beckon data showed that only 8.5% of brands are even tracking ad
viewability, much less acting on it. Improving viewability can boost media ROI,
and it’s easier than you might think. According to Beckon data, brands that track
viewability alongside their other KPIs and prioritize improvement increased the
viewability of their ads by 27.5% in one year!
If you’re ready to address viewability head-on, these tips and tricks—collected
from leading brands that are optimizing and negotiating their way to better
viewability—are a great place to start.
To be considered “viewable,” online ads must
have 50% of its pixels visible to a viewer for at
least one second.

3. 1
Partner with a respected third party like Moat, IAS, etc. that audits and tracks the viewability of your online display ads. You’ll
want to integrate your new viewability data with the rest of your spend and performance data so you can see it all side by side.
Pull the data into a marketing intelligence solution like Beckon to see how your ad viewability stacks up.
Now that we have an aggregate platform that allows
us to bring in data from anything, structured in a
meaningful way, we have it, the media agency has it,
and there's accountability to that viewability number
in real time. We can see what viewability rates are
across brands, across either display or video, etc.,
so we can start to address concerns if the numbers
creep up or anything looks alarming.
— Jeff Rasp, Director
US Consumer Health Digital Strategy at Bayer

4. 2
Your agencies should also be able to share viewability
metrics. Many ad publishers report on viewability, but it’s
often left out of the reports shared with brands unless
specifically requested. Encourage your agency to include
viewability data along with your current performance
reports, so that it can becomes part of your routine
analysis and optimization. Keep in mind that agencies and
brands alike are trying to figure out how to get better
viewability from ad publishers, but with transparency and
close collaboration, you can diagnose and address low
viewability together.
In this quick example, we’ve taken a look at viewability
rates by campaign, with an industry benchmark overlaid.
We can quickly spot low performing campaigns, with
significant dips below the industry average. This can spark
deeper conversations with partners and further analysis.
Look at trends over time, or dig deeper to determine what
factors drove low viewability, and then take action.

5. 3
Ask your agency to negotiate make—goods or credits with publishers where you see low viewability. You’re on solid ground in
doing so (remember: you’re paying for it!). Several Beckon clients have successfully recouped investments in low performing ads.
Also, consider renegotiating contracts with media partners based on performance benchmarks so if a media partner falls below a
predetermined viewability threshold, they’ll be required to deliver additional impressions to make up for low viewability.
If a campaign does not achieve the viewability threshold
for Measured Impressions, publishers will make good
with additional Viewable Impressions until the threshold
is met. Such a guarantee ensures that all paid measurable
ad impressions will be viewable at a threshold that both
exceeds the minimum standard and falls within observed
variances. A buyer and a seller should agree on a single
measurement vendor ahead of time. The industry aspires
to variances of no more than 10% between viewability
measures provided by different vendors.
— State of Viewability Transaction 2015, IAB
We [Campbell’s] chose to only contract with
media partners who would contractually agree to
deliver 100% of impressions viewed, which was
definitely controversial back then. Luckily, we
didn't see a big uptick in our CPM because of it.
We do pay a fee for it, but we have managed
[to limit] the CPM increase.
— Marci Raible, VP, Global Media Marketing Services
Campbell Soup Company

6. 4
Once you have viewability data aggregated with performance
data in a trusted marketing intelligence platform, you can
slice and dice down to various levels of granularity, looking
for trends around the ad sizes, placements, types of creative,
and publishers that perform best. Industry reports show that
interactive ads, mobile ads, video ads, in-app ads, and
non-programmatically bought ads generally yield the highest
viewability. Unsurprisingly, it’s also been reported that above-
the-fold ads are viewed 87% longer than below-the-fold ads,
and vertical ad sizes outperform their counterparts. Test to
see if these industry trends hold true for your brand, and
work with your media partners to adjust strategy as needed.
A few stack rankers side-by-side can deliver quick insight
into how various factors contribute to high (or low)
viewability. In this example, we’ve chosen to rank viewability
rate by publisher and ad sizes. In both we can see some big
differences in viewability, so then we rolled up both factors
in a card showing how performance breaks down by ad size
and publisher, over time. This should help with renegotiating
terms and requesting make-goods, maybe even optimizing
out of those partners.

7. 5
Viewability is important, but it’s not the only KPI. Be sure you’re also looking at cost per viewed impression and metrics that measure
outcomes, such as click-through rates and conversion rates. So long as you know what you are setting out to do, and how you’ll
measure success prior to kicking off a campaign or initiative, you’ll see the full impact of your media spend and have a good compass
to evaluate what’s working and what to adjust.
We have some minimum thresholds for viewability that we put
into all of our contracts—some buys written in pen and other buys
that are written in pencil. We optimize weekly to understand if
performance slowdowns are conversion related or based off of
viewability. For e-commerce and direct response marketing,
brand impressions are important, but conversions are what
really matters so viewability becomes a much more secondary
metric. We care about it from a contractual perspective, and we'll
track and optimize against it, but conversions and other metrics
are more heavily weighted. We'll look at all of those metrics, then
decide how to shift media to make sure we're making the most
out of our campaigns.
— Conrad Bowman, Digital Analytics Manager
The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company

8. Though viewability is a hot topic in industry news,
measuring and improving ad viewability is actually
quite simple for most brands, and can greatly improve
the overall ROI of your media buys. Once you’ve
established what’s important at your organization and
reviewed trends in high and low viewability, work with
your media partners to optimize performance together.
We’ve found that most organizations have had great
success teaming up with agencies and partners to see,
understand, and improve performance. But remember,
if a partner is crimping performance and making little
effort to improve, you can always begin anew with
partners who are committed to transparency and
driving business growth.
LEARN MORE
Maximizing the impact of every ad dollar requires closely
tracking performance and collaborating with partners
to optimize across it all. For more tips and tricks on
managing media investments, check out our library
of media transparency, agency partnership, and data
ownership resources.
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Get in touch at hello@beckon.com.