Varick Aims To Use Viewability Measurement In All Campaigns, Partners With Integral

Varick Media Management (VMM), the agency trading desk inside MDC Partners, on Monday announced a partnership with Integral Ad Science to measure ad viewability rates.

Varick’s goal it to use measure viewability in all of its campaigns, per a release. Integral is a Media Rating Council (MRC) accredited viewbility measurement vendor. The MRC’s standards for display viewability are 50% of an ad’s pixels being in-view for at least one continuous second.

“Programmatic ad buying is a great tool for advertisers, but ads are often only effective if qualified consumers see them,” stated Paul Rostkowski, president of Varick. The trading desk will immediately begin using Integral’s viewability tech on campaigns.

According to Jim Caruso, VP of product strategy at Varick, the company had been “testing and working with a variety of partners” to measure viewability, acknowledging that “prior to this partnership, [Varick’s] viewability measures were on a one-off basis.”

Despite the fact the MRC’s standards for viewability were implemented this spring -- making viewability ratings an acceptable form of currency in digital ad trading -- viewability rates have not improved. In fact, Integral’s most recent report said that just 45.3% of ad traded via real-time bidding (RTB) exchanges were viewable in Q2 2014, down from the 51.3% rate exchanges had in Q1 2014.

Caruso told Real-Time Daily that the viewability rates on VMM-run campaigns currently vary from campaign to campaign, with some rates “as high as 90% and as low as 50%.”

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