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In search of the elusive 50% – How predictive technology is helping us reach the wandering consumer

By niall hogan

December 6, 2013 | 4 min read

If you go down to the woods today, you’ll not be surprised to hear that approximately half of online display advertising is wasted by non-viewed ads. But despite the success of the current John Lewis Christmas offering, it was always thus for TV, when the surge in electricity proved that the main ad break in popular programmes sent millions of Brits to switch on the kettle for a cup of tea.

Niall Hogan

The 1990 World Cup semi-final between England and Germany sucked up a record-breaking 2,800 megawatts after a penalty shoot-out. More recently Coronation Street recorded a surge of three gigawatts, amounting to 1,750,000 kettles simultaneously switched on in a five-minute period.

If that isn’t a direct correlation that a large part of the core audience had left the living-room, and therefore were not viewing the advertising being paid for, I don’t know what is. And even accompanied by John Wanamaker’s much used ‘which half of my advertising is wasted’ quote, rolled out at conferences and screaming from news headlines, there is no hint of calls for the TV media cost of ‘lost viewers’ to be paid back to advertisers.

Yet the digital world – which sold its data soul to gain slow acceptance as a valid media by the marketing community, has now found itself inextricably bound by its accountability.

A quietly raging debate about approximately 40-60 per cent (depending on source) of online display advertising being wasted because it’s not seen by consumers is the latest reason for marketers to lose faith in digital. This isn’t a level or comparable playing field. Billions of digital impressions are available, enabling brands to reach a highly targeted and relevant audience across regions and globally. That reach is achieved at a much more competitive cost, provides acquisition and is more accountable than TV metrics. Increasingly these are being traded programmatically to produce even more efficiency.

Predictive technology helps identify and deliver quality audiences online. Quality metrics, like viewability, are critical for increasing opportunities to see, improving engagement, and ultimately improving campaign efficiency, channel attribution and paths to conversion.

A review of the display advertising industry, published by Integral Ad Science last month, revealed how online viewability is affected by an ad’s size. Vertical ads (160x600) performed the best out of all the formats, with an average of 50.8 per cent of ads in view for at least one second (the IAB viewability standard adopted from the US). The same report showed that directly placed ads had the highest viewability of all the ad sizes, with percentage of ads in view for at least one second increasing across the board. The good news for advertisers is that the report also saw an improvement on viewability stats from direct publishers to exchanges, in H1 2013 compared to H2 2012.

Digital media isn’t perfect, but we have the technology and quality metrics to improve opportunities for consumers to see, and engage in, display advertising. We hope the current push for more transparency will build more trust in the media, and deliver a better brand experience for consumers.

Niall Hogan is UK managing director of Integral Ad Science, a sponsor of the Digital Trading Awards, which have been set up to reward great performance in digital advertising and trading. Entries are open with a deadline of 6 February.

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