We all talk about viewability a lot in the ad industry. It's for a good reason. Nobody wants their campaign to be under the fold or not be rendered for long enough that it meets the MRC and IAB UK
standard of 50% of pixels for a second. It is a very low standards bar -- everyone knows that -- but just how modest a target it is becomes clear when you take a look at the latest
research from Lumen.
It uses eye-tracking technology to go beyond how long an ad was viewable for and instead measure for how long it was actually viewed. The results are not for
the faint-hearted. Only 44% are actually noticed at all and of these, just 9% are viewed for a second while only 4% make it to the two-second mark. As such, the researchers conclude that while 40% of
print ads are looked at for a second or more, this falls to 9% for digital.
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Perhaps the real nugget in the research was the finding that gets mentioned at the bottom of Marketing
Week's coverage and which I would be tempted to make the headline. The digital display ads that get the most attention are beautifully crafted units that look like a creative team has put a lot
of work into them. They are most definitely not what the researchers refer to as "moving direct mail pieces."
In other words, advertisers do not directly control viewability, although they can
measure it and ensure they are not billed for unviewable media. However, they can directly control their ad's chances of being viewed for a second or longer, once it becomes viewable. The way they do
this is the most old-fashioned approach of all -- get a creative team to build a beautiful ad that catches the eye or perhaps get a copywriter to write something that stops a Web user in their
tracks.
In plain and very simple language, if you want to catch the eye, you need to make it eye-catching. i've had many a discussion with media agency people who will secretly lament the
quality of digital display. Because so much of it is fired out at such great pace, it is rare for brands to put a lot of effort in. The result is spray and pray ads go unnoticed.
Thus, the
researchers at Lumen suggest that digital display should take a leaf out of digital outdoors and invest some creative juices in to making imagery that captivates the eye. You only have to walk around
a modern shopping centre to have your eye drawn to fantastic-looking creative on digital billboards and posters. According to the researchers, it's this creative input that is needed in digital
display to get to a point where more than 4% -- or just roughly one in twenty ads -- are viewed for two seconds or longer.