• by Maxwell Knight , Columnist, July 15, 2015

The flurry of industry stories about viewability over the past several months has at least made one thing clear: many advertisers still aren’t sure what position to take with regard to viewability. Even as the MRC tried to clarify certain aspects of the viewability quagmire recently – providing its first official guidance on mobile video viewability – it seemed to throw yet another wrench into the works when it introduced the concept of the loaded ad, an ad that is served but that no measurement firm can guarantee as "in-view" for any period of time.

What a mess. Or is it? If you think about it, the industry is going through the very same process of evolution that it did when CPA buying was introduced a few years ago. CPA buying was a mess too, in the beginning, and now it’s one of the foundational concepts in digital marketing. It evolved, as I see it, in three stages:

1. The Dark Ages. In the beginning, this capability doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as CPA buying, or viewability, or fill-in-the-blank other new technology, and marketers are blissful in their ignorance. We sense there might be a better way, but we don’t know what it is yet, and we’re doing just fine, thanks. With CPA, this meant people were buying ads with no ability to track conversions; they focused on other metrics instead.
2. The Era of Manic Adoption. It’s here! There’s a shiny new metric! A better way, and we all have to have it RIGHT NOW! It’s not really working yet? Doesn’t matter! It’s blowing up all our other KPIs? Who cares! It’s new and it’s great and I WANT IT.Conversion tracking became possible and everyone freaked out about optimizing out wasteful impressions, but only blunt tools were available (buy/don’t buy). Then, a “pay for performance” model came into vogue. Ad networks sprung up all over the place using pricing leverage to arbitrage their way to successful “guaranteed CPA” campaigns (Hello, Ad.com). Finally, buyers realized that networks were taking huge margins in return for assuming the risk, get annoyed at this, and began to rethink.
3. The Strategic Crossroads. Finally, we arrive, soberly, at a mature and thoughtful understanding of our newest Big Idea. The strengths and weaknesses become clear, the big picture emerges, and we learn to reconcile our old goals with new ones.  Dynamic pricing comes along and algorithmic buying begins transforming the blunt optimization hammers into precise scalpels. Very little pure CPA buying is left, with most performance buying happening programmatically as brands and agencies realize that by assuming the performance risk themselves their prices drop significantly and volumes grow with the aggregation of supply onto exchanges vs. networks. People begin to discuss attribution, realizing that not all “conversions” as recorded by current systems are the same.

Viewability is following a very similar pattern. To begin with, (The Dark Ages) marketers knew that not all ads are seen, but this is built into the pricing model and left at that. Then viewability tracking became possible (and generally agreed upon per MRC) and everyone freaked out – enter the Era of Manic Adoption.

Viewability guarantees become popular, as do viewability minimums (which is just another way of saying guarantee). Advertisers begin to understand that not all of their ads are actually seen on the screen by real live humans. Fears of wasted impressions, and lack of control, drive some buyers out of exchanges completely. They begin demanding that their agencies provide 100 percent viewability. Industry organizations plead for sanity, and attempt to establish standards and accredit reliable viewability-measurement vendors. But the fog is slow to clear.

Finally, there is the Strategic Crossroads: Buyers have realized that those guarantees of viewability are not “free,” that they are in fact paying for the privilege of getting them. People start to get annoyed by this. Viewability becomes a component of optimization, algorithmic buying begins to get smarter by evaluating not just the probability of action but the quality of the potential impression. Viewability guarantees become less popular as better tools allow marketers to take the hunt for efficiency into their own hands. People begin to discuss engagement, realizing that not all viewable impressions carry the same impact.

So where are we now with viewability? To hear many in the trade media tell it, we’re still firmly rooted in Stage 2. But the MRC and a number of early movers in the industry are trying their damnedest to move us to Stage 3. We’ll get there soon enough – faster, I’d venture, than we did with CPA buying – and viewability will assume its rightful and (more importantly) strategic place in the digital marketer’s toolkit. Patience, please – we’re almost there.