Optimizing Ad Campaign Performance Toward Viewability

Enhancing the effectiveness of an ad campaign hinges on maximizing its visibility to a site’s visitors, a concept known as viewability. Viewability stands as a paramount concern for both publishers and advertisers. But what exactly does viewability entail?

Viewability is a digital advertising metric that measures impressions that were seen by a human and is gauged by whether an ad on a webpage has a genuine opportunity to be visible within a browser window. The industry agreed standard as defined by the MRC, the Media Rating Council defines viewability as: 50% of an ad’s creative pixels must be in view for at least one second. 

While ideally all ads on a webpage will be visible, factors such as ad layout, user behavior, loading times, or improper ad placement (e.g., off-screen ads) can impede viewability. 

Consequently, third-party measurement firms began tracking viewability KPIs (key performance indicators) to ensure accurate ad measurement. Surprisingly, these viewability vendors discovered that a significant portion of online ad placements went unseen.

Consider the landscape of viewability during its initial measurement:

  • Best case scenario: Paying for 100% viewability, yet achieving only 69%.
  • Worst case scenario: Paying for 100%  viewability, but only achieving 46%.

The Challenge for Advertisers

Depending on an ad’s placement on a webpage, whether it occupies prime real estate or lingers at the page’s periphery, it’s all too easy for it to go unseen.

In the past, advertisers and publishers lacked the means to assess whether ad campaigns were seen/viewable. However, with access to viewability measurement vendors and metrics, both parties can now scrutinize ad performance. This newfound transparency prompts advertisers to question the value of their investments when confronted with low viewability rates.

From the advertiser’s perspective, paying premium rates for subpar viewability is undesirable. Thus, the question arises: How can advertisers ensure that they invest in high viewability placements?

The Challenge for Publishers

Advertiser expectations for viewability have surged while publishers grapple with inadequate solutions to meet these demands. Consequently, publishers suffer revenue losses from advertising. When advertisers withdraw campaigns due to poor viewability, it impedes publishers’ ability to generate quality content, often resulting in content recycling and diminished relevance.

Viewability: The Current Landscape and AdTech Solutions

For several reasons, AdTech vendors cannot offer a definitive optimization for the sell side: 

  • Publishers cannot easily redesign and lift restrictions on websites
  • Major players like Google, Moat, and Integral Ad Science offer generic solutions that fail to satisfy individual publisher needs to achieve success for their advertiser partners
  • Eliminating non-viewable inventory sacrifices impressions and revenue
  • Lazy loading fails to guarantee viewable impressions comes at a heavy cost 

The question persists: How can publishers optimize campaign delivery to the  viewability KPI effectively, efficiently, and profitably?

Optimera’s publisher lens Viewability Solution

Enter Optimera, with a groundbreaking approach that leverages existing resources to achieve more.  Led by Founder and CEO Keith Candiotti who built the solution to satisfy his own team’s needs while running AdOps and Ad Technology at the New York Daily News. 

Only publishers can optimize! 

By avoiding over-delivery, compensating for underperforming campaigns, and optimizing inventory allocation, Optimera empowers sellers to secure inventory that will be measured as viewable,validated by any third party vendor. This in turn aids publishers in surpassing buyers’ key performance metrics, simultaneously improving advertiser outcomes while driving publisher revenue growth.

Optimera’s Solution for Direct Sold Campaigns and Private Marketplace Deals:

Benefits for Direct Sold Campaigns

  • Ability to access viewable inventory selectively
  • Creation of orders targeting specific viewability segments, e.g., 70% viewable campaigns
  • Validation through clients’ third-party ad measurements 
  • Preservation of impressions

Benefits for Private Marketplace Deals

  • Identify buyers seeking viewable inventory
  • Upsell from open exchange to Private Marketplace (PMP)
  • Facilitating a transition to Direct Sold deals

Now is the opportune moment to leverage Optimera’s viewability solution and meet viewability KPIs the first time, overdelivery and makegoods will no longer be necessary. While viewability measurement vendors including Active View measure for and cater to advertisers, Optimera supports publishers with optimization solutions via publisher-only technology.

Increase publisher revenue and improve advertiser outcomes with Optimera.