Dive Brief:
- The key finding from the AppNexus Q3 Digital Advertising Index was that marketers’ digital advertising attention has shifted from whether to spend their budget online to concerns over bot traffic and viewability.
- Proving that quality matters in digital ads, the report found that removing non-compliant inventory on a pre-bid basis boosted U.S. buyers’ clickthough rates 46%, and gave publishers a 255% lift in average CPMs.
- Viewability is also up with the AppNexus Inventory Quality initiative leading to a 77% increase in its platforms' average view-through rate.
Dive Insight:
The AppNexus Q3 Digital Advertising Index is based on more than three trillion impressions on its platform over the quarter, and the time period includes the third phase of AppNexus’ Inventory Quality initiative designed to get rid of invalid traffic on its platform. The initiative meets marketers’ growing concern over ad fraud and viewability. Increases in clickthrough and view-through rates uncovered in the research showed the value of removing non-compliant inventory from the AppNexus platform.
The research also found increases in impression for publishers in several specific categories. Reflecting the ramping up of the election season the Law and Government category impressions increased 245% ahead of the first GOP debate. Over the quarter Real Estate impressions were up 232%, Science jumped 172%, and Autos and Vehicles rose 84%. All three of those categories posted their quarter of the year.
Overall global impressions were down 3.5% from Q2, a drop similar to last year, and attributed to seasonal digital ad spending patterns.
From the report, “Many of our industry’s most prominent members have shifted their attention to tackling challenges like viewability and bot traffic. In Q3, these issues dominated the conversation in trade journals and on convention stages, suggesting an unprecedented, industry-wide commitment to ensuring that digital impressions will be seen by real human beings."
