GroupM To Impose Viewability Standards Worldwide

by Steve McClellan , August 17, 2017

WPP’s GroupM today announced it is imposing its viewability standards globally and strengthening its viewability standard for social and mobile newsfeed environments. It’s also undertaking research to study the performance of social and newsfeed video.

The firm has had viewability standards in place for several years in the U.S. for an ad to count as a payable impression. The standards have required -- and will continue to require -- that 100% of the pixels in an ad must be in view for some duration of time for all ad formats.

GroupM said it has strengthened its standard for mobile and social newsfeed environments and now requires a one-second duration for the time a display ad passes through the viewable screen. That’s because viewers sometimes scroll too quickly to see ads, the company said.

In addition to 100% viewability, pre- and mid-roll video impressions must be user-initiated with sound on and at least 50% completed.

For social, in-feed and outstream video, impressions can be autoplayed or user-initiated, with or without sound. That’s a recommendation for now, subject to change pending research studying viewing behavior to such formats.

“Our ambition is to offer clients the absolute best quality digital media in every market,” stated John Montgomery, GroupM’s EVP, brand safety. “By working with clients and progressive media and technology partners, we can help shape the digital marketplace for the better, as we have seen in the U.S.

"It was always our goal to operate around a consistent standard globally and following many months of partner dialogue, now is the right time for us to move forward with these enhanced standards that consider the evolution in social and mobile platforms, as well as user behaviors.”

GroupM and some clients are undertaking research looking at impressions in social and newsfeed video. The firm said it will work with DoubleVerify, Moat and IAS to study impressions across Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and Snapchat to help determine optimum “social and newsfeed video duration metrics.”

advertising, agency, audience measurement, digital, social media, viewability

4 comments about "GroupM To Impose Viewability Standards Worldwide".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 18, 2017 at 9:40 a.m.
Group M is to be commended for its initiatives on this very important metric---a necessary prelude for what all advertisers really want, namely advertising impact. You can't have impact if an ad cant be seen.
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John Grono from GAP Research, August 19, 2017 at 9:22 a.m.

Agreed Ed.

But there is a 'But...".

So what if Omnicon came out with their standards. Then Publicis responded. And so on, and so on. Could that not damage the credibility of such standards?

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 19, 2017 at 7:02 p.m.

John, I have a hunch that the other large shops will more or less follow Group M's lead on this as 100% visibility makes too much sense for all advertisers.

John Grono from GAP Research, August 19, 2017 at 7:32 p.m.

I hope you are correct here Ed. I agree on 100% viewability as would most, but there could de an 'arms race' around the duration.

Here in Australia we (in general) work via our media agency industy body (the MFA) with the relevant media industry body (in this case IAB Australia) to develop standards, audience measurement currencies etc. In essence we share our IP 'for the greater good', but once the standards and currencies are set and in the market it's back to normal ... may the best person win!