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Shell reveals own viewability metrics and calls on publishers to root out ad fraud

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By Jennifer Faull, Deputy Editor

March 12, 2015 | 4 min read

Shell has revealed its own viewability metrics, stating an ad must be seen for at least five seconds, after finding the industry standard “not good enough”.

The industry standards for viewability were set in the US by Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) group, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Association of National Advertisers, and American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As).

To be deemed viewed, 50 per cent of the ad must be seen in the browser for a minimum of one second for display and two consecutive seconds for video.

Last year, advertisers, agencies and publishers were able to begin trading against these standards.

However, speaking at the IAB: RTA Lessons Learned conference yesterday (11 March), Americo Campos Silva, global media manager for Shell International Petroleum company said: "The industry standard is, at least for us, not good enough [...] When we talk about viewability we want to be seen for five seconds."

“I don’t discuss with my agency one or two seconds. Five seconds is our benchmark and the goal in conversations.”

Silva explained that from a digital perspective is it active in 37 markets, generating around 10 billion impressions a year, 25 per cent of which are around brand activity and has seen promising results from ads that run programmatically.

“We did some tests over the past two years and it seems there is a correlation between usage of programmatic and the levels of viewabilty,” he added. “Maybe it’s just in our case, but these are our findings.”

He said that it has invested in developing new ad formats designed to boost views and engagement.

“What we’ve seen is that standard display formats are in decline over time. The traditional formats are going down in terms of viewability and we expect them to decline further,” he revealed, adding that the “novelty” formats it has created have been “much more engaging” for the consumer and have increased viewabilty.

He added that the creative standards need to improve across the industry.

“We’ve made an effort working with agencies to push the creativity forward. We saw from the data that better formats improve content, viewability and engagement.”

Shell follows the likes of Unilever and TalkTalk which have both issued their own metrics. The FMCG giant will only pay for ads that are 100 per cent viewable in a browser and at least 50 per cent must be played in the case of video, while TalkTalk looks to hit the 70 per cent mark but admits there is not "one size fits all" approach.

Fraud also remains one of Silva’s chief concerns. “The western markets, which are traditionally more sophisticated, are performing less well than markets where you would think digital is less sophisticated,” he revealed.

He later said that in western markets there is more sophisticated levels of fraud happening and called on publishers to work harder at weeding it out.

While he conceded that some publishers have taken positive steps to address ad fraud others are yet to take any action.

“We don’t work with publishers that don’t listen or work with us and those publishers will be left behind,” he said.

Shell's insights were drawn from over three years of observation from digital campaigns which used an ad verification platform.

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