Industry partnerships help Australia rank high for brand safety in mobile
Australia has come in first for brand safety in mobile because of a sophisticated local ecosystem of advertisers, publishers, and industry bodies championing initiatives such as ads.txt.
Australia saw decreases in brand risk across environments and formats, driven by a reduction in programmatic brand risk.
That means advertisers have prioritized clean impressions and publishers to deliver relevant engaging content and online experiences to garner longer ad exposure times, a great proxy for attention and engagement, according to Integral Ad Science’s Media Quality Report (MQR) for the second half of 2019.
Australia’s brand risk for desktop display improved from 4.6% ‘unsafe’ content in the second half of 2018 to 1.9% in the second half of 2019. Australia’s brand risk on mobile web video was also significantly reduced from 8.7% in the second half of 2018 to 4.2% in the second half of 2019, compared to the worldwide average at 7.7%.
Australia saw decreases in brand risk across environments and formats, primarily driven by a reduction in programmatic brand risk compared to H1 2019.
To put this in perspective, Australia’s next-door neighbour New Zealand’s brand risk scores slid backward over the same period.
New Zealand observed an increase in brand risk in the desktop display from 4.4% in the second half of 2018 to 5.1% in the second half of 2019. Brand risks for New Zealand also increased in mobile web display up from 5.2% in the second half of 2018 to 6.7% in the second half of 2019.
For viewability rates, Australia’s rose across all formats and environments in the second half of 2019 as compared to the previous year, desktop display stood at 71.7%, desktop video at 75.5% as compared to the worldwide average of 71% and 74.1% respectively.
Mobile in Australia also continued to show positive performance for viewability, mobile web video inventory hit 70.9% in the second half of 2019, a huge improvement from 63.9% in the second half of 2018. Mobile app display reported 69.9% viewability beating the worldwide viewability rate of 68.7%.
This is because the increased global viewability metrics were programmatic inventory, which saw greater margins of increase than publisher-direct inventory both globally and within individual markets.
“Advertisers are making mobile viewability a priority in light of a consumer behaviour shift towards increased mobile use. The report shows a significant increase in viewability benchmarks, across all environments, year-on-year,” said James Diamond, managing director for Australia and New Zealand at IAS.
“It is particularly positive to see inventory exceeding 70% viewability in desktop display and video, with mobile web and app approaching this target at speed. To access consumers in the right place, at the right time, with the right message, an additional focus is needed to ensure brand suitability strategies and proactive ad fraud protection are implemented across the mobile environment”.
Read the full report here.