Vibrant Media adopts Group M’s tougher visibility guidelines, now Moat accredited

Group M unveiled its own visibility standards at the end of last year, alongside client Uniliever, stating that 100 per cent of an ad must be visible, that video ads must be initiated by users rather than auto-played, and that at least 50 per cent of the ad must play with the volume on.

The standards are much tougher than the industry guidelines established by the Media Ratings Council and the Internet Advertising Bureau, which specifiy that for display ads at least 50 per cent of the ad must be visible for a minimum one second, two seconds for video.

“Vibrant Media’s ads are integrated natively within online content rather than around it – 88 per cent of ads that were analysed by Moat achieved 100 per cent viewability in terms of pixels viewable on screen,” said Jonah Goodhart, chief of Moat.

Vibrant’s ads also require a user interaction such as a click to initiate an ad. This latter quality satisfies the requirements of the IAB’s Click Measurement Guidelines which were incorporated into the MRC’s viewability standards in March 2014.

Vibrant Media’s executive chairman and founder, Craig Gooding said: “GroupM is to be commended for taking a staunch stand on the viewability issue…I urge other digital ad companies to undergo Moat's assessments to show that they too can achieve higher levels of viewability to match the ever-developing standards."

GroupM's managing partner of Digital Advertising Operations, Joe Barone said: “An ad impression must actually make an impression, so at very least it needs human eyes to see it - and all of it. The viewability issue is well documented; no matter whose numbers you believe, we need to aggressively attack this problem with our client, publisher, and ad tech partners.

"This is why we continue to work with Vibrant Media, as they have consistently delivered viewable impressions with unprecedented results. Vibrant Media’s support in adhering to GroupM's viewability requirements lends further clout to the proposition that the "half an ad for one second" metric is not enough by any means.”

Unilever has also openly documented its beliefs that it should only have to pay for what inventory is actually deemed in-view to audiences. The FMCG giant's vice president of global media for Europe and the Americas Sarah Mansfield recently told The Drum that it expects to "get what it pays for" when it comes to digital media advertising, which is why it has backed the stricter viewability terms.

Group M is parent company to media agencies MEC, Mindshare, MediaCom and Maxus.