Behavioral Targeting Boosts Viewability Rates, Study Finds

The IAB is urging marketers to aim for 70% viewability on campaigns next year, and if marketers are going to take the challenge seriously, perhaps they need to look more closely at behavioral targeting.

Videology, a programmatic video ad platform, this week released new research on viewability. Included in the research is a case study of a major auto advertiser. Videology says that when the auto advertiser targeted by demographics, the ads were viewable 31% of the time, compared to a 71% viewability rate on ads purchased via behavioral targeting. Videology says the data came from the same inventory sources.

In the case of video ads, Videology also warns against running campaigns that transact solely on viewability ratings, noting that only adds served over a VPAID standard are measurable for viewability -- not ads served over a VAST ad call. Videology says that this means nearly 30% of video ad inventory cannot be measured for viewability.

“[T]he danger is to give too much weight to any one proxy metric, whether that’s click-through rates or viewable impressions, and lose sight of the actual desired outcomes,” stated Quinn Sanders, director of product management at Videology.

During the first three quarters of 2014, Videology found that airline video ads had the best viewability rate, at 86%. Political ads (74%), hotels (57%), packaged foods (55%) and apparel (51%) round out the top five, and were the only three verticals to have over 50% viewability rates during the first three quarters of the year. Government (24%), beverages (29%), credit cards (33%), banks (35%) and CPG (41%) were the bottom five.

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