Commentary

Should Digital Media Sellers Adopt A Single Global Viewability Standard?

While the big news last week was Snap’s IPO, the real news is the mounting pressure on social media platforms and publishers to assure marketers that their budgets are being spent on advertising that delivers real ROI. Recent moves by Google’s YouTube and Facebook to undergo independent audits of their platforms by the Media Rating Council (MRC) are having ripple effects throughout digital media.

Measurement. Metrics. Data. Independent, third-party verification. Viewability. Trust. Transparency. All have been bubbling up for some time but THE move to get audited is a real signal that some marketers are fed up.

Procter & Gamble’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard has kept the pressure on. In fact, not only did he call out poor ad measurement and bad ad experiences in late January at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual leadership conference, he’s now saying that Google and Facebook’s commitments to MRC audits don’t go far enough.

At last week’s Association of National Advertisers conference, he said that while he’s encouraged by Google and Facebook’s move to have some of their data audited, he wants to see the verification and audits completed—P&G made audit requests a year ago.

P&G is the largest advertising spender in the world. When P&G talks, people usually listen.

With marketers now spending $72 billion on digital advertising, outpacing TV spending, it’s high time that viewability, metrics, measurement, and data standards start to align. Interestingly, however, there’s a double standard for digital media. The same rigor that is requested of it in terms of metrics and performance, hasn’t been applied to the world of TV advertising.

That’s going to change, however, given the rise of connected and addressable TV. Just last week, NBC said it was setting aside $1 billion “audience guarantees” -- so maybe the TV world is lurching in the right direction.

Marketers like Pritchard are urging the industry to adopt a single global viewability standard from the MRC. Time will tell if this is in the cards. But when marketers’ budgets are at stake, can sellers of all kinds really afford to ignore their demands?

1 comment about "Should Digital Media Sellers Adopt A Single Global Viewability Standard? ".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 6, 2017 at 4:43 p.m.

    Tobi, the fact that "marketers" are spending $72 billion annually in digital media---more than they do in TV---is basically irrelevant as most of the digital ad dollars are not for branding efforts. Nevertheless, I agree that a single unified definition of ad viewability for digital video ads is a must---but not the IAB's unrealistic "standard". I don't understand why Pritchard endorses this laughably unrealistic definition---unless he want's to adopt an "industry-wide" approach and that is more important than getting a fair shake---fair to P&G's brands, that is. The only definition that brings digital video almost on a par with TV is whatever it takes to have your digital commercial play on the user's screen from start to finish---without interruption---just as on TV. The problem is that you have varying lengths of ads, so a single definition simply wont work. You need "100% viewability" based on ad length. If the ad runs for 10 seconds, then it must be viewable for all ten seconds in the correct sequence; if the ad is a 15-second spot, then it must run for 15 seconds from start to finish on the user's screen, etc. Even then, there is no guarantee that the ads are "exposed" as there are many other items of content on the users' screens---unlike TV. But a flexible, 100% viewability" definition for digital would be a start.

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About the Author

Tobi Elkin is the Editor of MediaPost's Real-Time Daily and the RTBlog. You can reach Tobi at telkin@mediapost.com.