Advertising: Can your ads be seen by users?

What are we talking about when we talk about ad verification?

• It is the "yardstick" of programmatic advertising, which measures the visibility and security of advertising;
• It is the "favorite" of brand advertisers. For example, many international brand advertisers such as Procter & Gamble and Parkson have explicitly required that media support the visibility monitoring service of MMA-Ad Monitoring SDK when placing advertisements .
• It is a "hot spot" in the entire advertising industry. Decades ago, advertising budgets might have been wasted on the inability to accurately deliver advertising, but now they may be wasted on invisible exposure or negative exposure.

As the industry gradually matures, advertising visibility and security are gradually gaining attention from advertisers and advertising service providers in China. In this issue, we will first explain visibility in advertising verification.

I. Definition

Ad viewability is an indicator that measures whether an ad is actually seen by the user . It is used to measure the number of visible exposures generated on the user's screen.

Regardless of whether advertising is delivered on a PC or mobile device, there is a situation where users do not actually see the advertisement, resulting in invisible exposure . For example, in scenarios where the ad fails to load, is blocked by other elements, is located at the bottom of the page, or the information flow page where the ad is located slides too fast.

Taking the following picture as an example, if the user only sees less than half of the banner ad under the main text of a Weibo post and then exits the page, it will be counted as an invisible exposure.

II. Relevant standards

Overseas, IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and MRC (Media Rating Council) actively promoted the establishment of viewability standards in the early stages of programmatic advertising development.

Take the MRC visibility standard as an example:

• For PC display ads: display at least 50% of the pixels in the visible area for at least 1 second;
• For PC video ads: display at least 50% of the pixels in the visible area for at least 2 seconds;
• For larger PC display ads: display at least 30% of the pixels in the visible area for at least 1 second.

The focus of the advertising ecosystem and practitioners has shifted from PC to mobile. Due to changes in interaction methods and differences in advertising formats , more segmented and customized mobile standards are required.

In China, the Mobile Marketing Association China (MMA ) launched the "Mobile Internet Advertising Visibility Verification Standard" based on the MRC standards, adding standards and definitions such as continuous time, strong user interaction, and sub-second interaction.

Take mobile display ads as an example:

• Continuous time : Visible exposure is calculated when at least 50% of the pixels in the visible area are displayed and the display lasts for at least 1 second.
• Strong user interaction : If the continuous duration condition is not met, but there is a legitimate interaction (action that meets the IAB click measurement criteria), then the ad is considered a viewable impression.
• Sub-second exposure : between visible exposure and invisible exposure, that is, more than 50% of the ad pixels are viewed continuously for 0.5s-1s. Although the duration is short, it can play an advertising role to a certain extent , and its value can be reported and measured independently.

In addition, different advertising formats have different verification standards. For example, for interactive advertising with strong interactivity, the Interactive Network Committee of the China Advertising Association has also simultaneously launched the interactive advertising industry standard - "Ad Visibility Standard";

Different advertisers will also have customized verification standards and set their own standards based on different delivery goals. For example, if a brand advertiser hopes that his video ad should be more than 3 seconds long to be considered effective, he can negotiate with the media to customize the reporting and billing standards.

3. Visibility Monitoring Principle

Currently, the PC side can use a combination of methods such as ad coordinates, mouse coordinates, and CPU calculations to monitor the visibility of ads, but all of them have shortcomings.

1. Advertising coordinates

By determining the position of the ad within the host webpage and the position of the browser window within the host webpage or the entire screen, and comparing the relative coordinates, it is possible to calculate whether the ad is contained within the browser and whether there is visible exposure.

However, if the ad is in iframe format, it is difficult to locate the ad slot.

2. Mouse coordinates

That is, the maximum value of the cosine of the angle between the screen vertex and the advertisement coordinates: When browsing a web page through IE, the monitoring company can determine whether the advertisement is visible by determining the triangular area formed by the mouse cursor, one corner of the screen and one corner of the advertisement.

However, monitoring the user's mouse coordinates risks violating the user's privacy.

3. CPU calculation

The CPU consumption and time difference when the browser loads the web page material can be used to determine whether the advertisement is displayed. However, this method has certain requirements on the hardware performance and computing power of the user's computer.

The mobile terminal can obtain media data through API and SDK to monitor visibility.

MMA China has even introduced a unified SDK architecture for SDK monitoring, using a unified set of SDK development standards that is compatible with third-party media apps, reducing technical development costs and docking cycles, and making advertising monitoring indicators more transparent, unified, and reliable.

Digital Advertising Monitoring and Verification Unified SDK Code of Practice ——MMA China

4. Industry Status

What is the visibility level in the domestic market? According to the "2019 China Digital Advertising Viewability Report" released by Sizmek, China's advertising viewability rate reached 50% in 2018. Although it still did not reach the internationally recommended standard of 70%, it achieved a growth of nearly 50% compared to 2017.

2019 China Digital Advertising Viewability Report-sizmek

In addition, the report also interprets the ad viewability rate from the perspective of the devices, media, ad placements , etc.

In terms of devices, based on the rapid development of mobile Internet advertising and the improvement of the media ecosystem, mobile terminals are better than PC terminals, with a viewability rate of 77%; (*The measurable rate is the proportion of ad viewability that can be monitored)

2019 China Digital Advertising Viewability Report-sizmek

In the media, based on user habits and media characteristics, financial and community media are above average, and the media homepage is higher than the deeper channel homepage and content homepage;

2019 China Digital Advertising Viewability Report-sizmek

In terms of ad positions, the top bar and middle banner ad positions are better than other ad positions due to their display location and small size, but not by much.

2019 China Digital Advertising Viewability Report-sizmek

V. Conclusion

For advertisers, monitoring ad visibility is a way to prevent wastage of advertising budget and make advertising more effective; for media, adding visibility monitoring can more accurately and transparently measure the value of ad space and manage it efficiently.

Although visibility has not yet been widely popularized and used by various advertisers as a hard indicator to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising, visibility is a concept with long-term significance and is a trend in the future development of the industry.

Author: Cucumber Morning News

Source: Qinggua Media