• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, November 12, 2015

A new report by Integral Ad Science, a company that analyzes media environments for online advertisers, finds that publishers have a ways to go toward acting on ad viewability metrics.

Integral Ad Science’s (IAS) Q3 2015 Media Quality Report finds that despite the industry’s frequent discussions surrounding the issues presented by non-viewable ads, viewability didn’t improve in Q3. Compared to Q2, display viewability in the U.S. decreased to 43%, a difference of 1%, and video viewability dropped five points to 32% this quarter. 

Brand risk, defined by IAS as the safety of the environment for ads, also didn’t change much quarter over quarter, with display up to 14%, compared to 12% last quarter, and video with a slight decrease of .6%. The quarter to quarter fluctuations used to be bigger, but IAS maintains the numbers are stagnant because the industry still hasn’t acted upon new viewability standards.

“This prepares us for Q4 when we expect demand to be higher, particularly for video inventory,” said Kiril Tsemekhman, chief data officer, IAS. “There’s huge room for improvement in terms of viewability. The Q3 report indicates that people aren’t as eager to execute on viewability [standards] yet but we expect that to change when media sellers begin to be incented on viewability metrics.”

The real change, Tsemekhman said, will take place in 2016 when he anticipates improvement as sellers begin to be paid more on viewable impressions.

IAS analyzes the quality of media environments via its TRAQ Score (TRue Advertising Quality), a quantifiable measure of media quality to verify that human beings rather than bots looked at ads bought via digital media tactics.