Why is Ad Viewability an important Metric?

A relatively recent concept in the digital marketing world, ad viewability is important because more than half of all ads aren’t seen by users, despite being paid for by advertisers. During the earlier years, ad networks focused more on the number of ads served, with marketers dividing the number of ads by the number of clicks, to calculate a campaign’s success. This ratio, later known as the CTR or click-through ratio, was quite a sought-after metric. Advertisers later, however, realized that if ads appeared at the bottom of a web page, but users did not scroll right down, that ad was non-viewable, with the impression to be negated. Other factors that contribute to ads being hidden are when users navigate away from the page before the ad itself loads, or when bots or proxy servers and not humans, open pages. Advertisers need to know which percentage of their ads are easily viewable, so they can get a better ROI. Media companies are trying to ensure high visibility to keep these customers happy so they stay.

Effects of Low Ad Viewability on Revenue 

Use this step-by-step process to find out whether low ad viewability is hitting your revenue. 

• Check account average ad viewability for AdX/AdSense accounts for the past month.
• Navigate to New Query, from Query Tool, selecting the last one month as a date range, month as the report dimension, and then select ‘Active View Viewable, in the report metrics section. 
• Hit ‘Run Report’, and check whether you get a score above or below 50%. 
• Check this metric against your eCPM over the last year, and using the ‘Edit button, change the date range, setting it to the last 12 months. 
• Re-run the report again, and check whether the average eCPM has dropped, risen, or remained constant and whether your Active View viewability has undergone the same thing. Check if your eCPM has dropped and your ad viewable impressions rate is below 50% or lower. That means that low ad viewability is hitting your revenue.

Importance of Ad Viewability Improvement and its Relationship with ROI

Ad viewability and a high ROI are correlated. Publishers must hike their ad’s visibility, and to do so they can start by designing their pages in a way that the ads get loaded with good potential of being viewed. You can design the page so the ad unit is ‘above the fold’, or is a ‘sticky ad’. The latter refers to a kind of ad that doesn’t change position whether the user scrolls up or down. 

Publishers also push towards their sites being mobile-friendly, using specific responsive templates that resize immediately when viewed on different devices. Guaranteed to give users a good experience no matter what they choose to browse on, UI is quite the priority. Viewability is also important in terms of design, as there should be symmetry, clear proportions and a clean visual hierarchy, and enough white space. Overall, the design should be clean and pleasing. Speed is of utmost importance. Sites loaded with ads from many networks ensure a long loading time, leading to lower ad viewability, as users navigate away from pages. If you speed up your ad delivery, you can improve viewability. Publishers also use 3rd party software to measure and validate ad viewability, making those metrics available to advertisers. Publishers have a choice of partnering with 15 Media Rating Counils’s Accredited Viewable Display Impression or Ad Verification vendors, tasked with measuring ad viewability across campaigns. 

How do you improve Ad Viewability? 

Use the best performing Ad Sizes

Vertical formats (like 300*600, and 160*600) and more, have higher viewability rates. Longer vertical ads work great. Try to use one vertical unit on each web page of your site, preferably in the sidebar so it doesn’t interfere with the main content. 

Ad Position 

A lot of pages have three common ad positions, namely one leader at the page’s top, one ad in the sidebar, and another leader ad at the bottom of the page. This varies according to page design. Small changes in position can make a massive viewability difference. The top leader, if placed below the site navigation bar, affects viewability negatively. Publishers can increase viewability by shifting this ad unit below the site navigation bar. This makes the content visible while the ad loads. Similarly, the bottom ad unit performs better if placed above the comments, page navigation bar, and author biography. Read our blog on optimum ad placement positions to dive deeper into the topic. 

Sticky Sidebar Ads 

If exploited well, sticky ads can really spike the performance and appearance of ads. Ensure they don’t cover other content and are only sticky when there is no content below them. Usually, websites have the main content on the left, with a narrow sidebar on the right. Put your stick ad in the content section on the left if you want your ads to be viewed with, driving better eCPMs. Some users may find this intrusive, so try putting some kind of ad units in the web page’s sidebar. However, these ads have poor viewable impression rates, as users scroll through content without interacting with the ad on the right. Read our blog about sticky ads to learn more about these interesting ad formats.

Page Load Speed 

If your page loads slowly, forget your users. They’ll leave, increasing your bounce rate, decreasing the publisher’s ad viewability rates, leading to publishers leaving too. According to this data, a 1-second delay in page loading reduces views by almost 11%, bringing down conversion rates by around 10%. Publishers can make some technical changes for improving speed, like file compression, image optimization, and redirect reduction, to increase total impressions. Here’s our blog about the relationship between ads and user experience that explains this further. 

Lazy Load Ads 

You can delay loading parts of a webpage till the user scrolls down. This might boost viewability because only ads that are seen will be loaded. Below-the-fold ads are best for lazy loading because the former has a poor ad viewable impressions rate because they load without the user reaching the page’s bottom. They provide no value because they aren’t seen. 

Monitor Viewability Scores 

Keep an eye on your ad viewability metrics, because they directly affect eCPMs, which in turn affect your net revenue. Try to maximize your revenue by implementing some basic changes to your ad inventory to raise your ad viewability. If your revenue has been affected by poor viewability, however, don’t expect any magical changes overnight. Wait for at least a month to see better CPMs from top ad providers on your site. 

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, ad viewability has quite an effect on publishers’ revenue. If you aren’t seen, there won’t be any earnings. Viewability data can assist publishers in boosting their display inventory’s value. Advertisers and digital marketing teams seek out publishers with a high viewability rate. Sharing viewability data helps brands compare your rates with that of their competitors.

About Publir

As experts in the programmatic advertising domain, Publir offers a one-of-a-kind unified platform specifically built to maximize earnings for digital content creators. We provide complete solutions for Ad Optimization, Subscriptions, Crowdfunding, QuickShop, and AdBlock Recovery. We can help you implement our tools and maximize revenue, all from a single dashboard. Reach out to us here –

• Phone : +1 (877) 229 9767
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Publishers could earn revenue simply by adding adverts on their websites just five years ago. It made no difference whether or not visitors viewed the advertisements. Visitors never saw up to 56% of the adverts that were shown. With the development of digital advertising, however, advertisers are bidding on visible impressions at a higher cost. Advertisers will only pay in vCPM rather than CPM once viewable advertising is in use.

What is vCPM?

vCPM is a marketing measure that stands for Viewable Cost per Mille. It counts the number of times a user sees an ad rather than the number of times the seller places it. The normal CPM measures the cost per thousand impressions, but the vCPM measures the cost per thousand viewable impressions.

An ad impression is defined as visible by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) when a seller can certify that a user saw more than 50% of the display ad for more than 1 second. Video advertising sold on a vCPM basis functions similarly, requiring consumers to see more than 50% of the video ad for more than 2 seconds before the impression is counted as viewable.

For instance, if an ad is loaded near the bottom of a webpage but a person does not scroll down far enough to see it on their device, the ad impression is not considered visible. Advertisers will have to pay for these ineffective impressions under CPM pricing. But on the other hand, advertisers are not paid for these non-viewable impressions when using vCPM.

How to calculate vCPM?

CPM is a measure used by advertisers. In other words, advertisers use CPM to determine how much money they will spend on an ad campaign. As a result, vCPM is now an advertiser-side statistic.

Advertisers use CPM to pay for all of the adverts that appear on a web page. Advertisers, although, only pay for those that were active and visible on a user’s screen while using vCPM.

The following are the formulas for calculating vCPM:

vCPM = 1000 x Cost / Viewable impressions

vCPM = CPM x Total Impressions / Viewable impressions

vCPM = CPM / Viewable impressions %

What is the difference between CPM and vCPM?

CPM stands for ‘cost per thousand impressions,’ as you may know. Advertisers should pay for a thousand served impressions when employing CPM. Advertisers would pay for what they bought at the auction, whether it is displayed or not.

On the other hand, vCPM is the cost per thousand viewable impressions. This implies that advertisers are charged based on 1,000 visible impressions of the ad placed rather than the ad served. The ad’s viewability is a crucial factor in deciding the campaign’s cost. Buyers that want to raise brand recognition are more likely to employ vCPM.

Viewability isn’t taken into account at all in CPM. Publishers with 20% ad viewability will be compensated at the same rate as those with 80% ad viewability. In other words, if one of your pages has 20% ad viewability, the RPM will be the same as if the page had 80% ad viewability. However, there are certain exceptions. Advertisers will only bid on 80% ad viewability pages/publishers when using third-party viewability partners to evaluate placement-level ad viewability, even if the CPMs are greater than the normal range. Furthermore, most DSPs can bid on more visible placements to increase campaign ROI.

Although, when it comes to vCPM, it will grow when ad viewability is low. For example, if ad viewability is 20%, an advertiser must purchase 5 times to achieve one complete viewable impression. When the viewability is greater than 50%, simply purchasing an impression is sufficient.

How to improve vCPM?

As we are well aware of the fact now that vCPM is dependent on ad viewability data, here are some pointers and recommendations for publishers looking to enhance ad viewability and thus vCPM:

• Experiment with different ad styles and locations to increase your chances of getting better results.
  
• Don’t take it for granted that advertising above the fold is always visible. Compare the results of different ad locations (above the fold vs. below the fold) to see which ones perform better.
  
• To maximize viewability, do not place too many adverts, since this will result in a poor user experience.
  
• Experiment with different ad kinds and styles to find which ones perform best. Vertical advertisements outperform horizontal ads, according to Google.
  
• Improve viewability and engagement by including the most popular ad types and layouts on your web pages. For example, the position directly above the fold is regarded as the most visible.

Final Thoughts

To witness a rise in vCPM, publishers should always focus on ad viewability strategies. Use heatmap tools to identify the most user-interacted areas of the website. Try not to reduce the amount of space available for content in order to make your adverts more visible. Publishers’ earnings may suffer as a result of vCPM. In the long run, however, effective use of ad viewability indicators may lead to a stronger ad placement system that benefits the whole ad ecosystem.

Working on the viewability of your web pages will not reduce your earnings. On the bright side, a good marketing campaign may actually help marketers by raising market demand for your inventory.

Read More

In-App Advertising – All You Need to Know

What Are In-Feed Ads – How Can You Make The Best Use Of Them?

The post Importance of Understanding vCPM for Publishers first appeared on Publir.