Dive Brief:
- At its leadership meeting this week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau had a big focus on ad viewability.
- A common theme of discussion surrounded the idea that agencies were demanding sellers to provide 100% ad viewability guarantees. Currently, IAB recommends 70% as the goal.
- IAB urges agencies and vendors to realize that 100% is unrealistic, but is hopeful that technology will improve within the next 12 months so that variance between vendors is less than 10%.
Dive Insight:
Viewability is a hot topic—and a contentious issue, at that—among digital advertisers, vendors, and agencies. Some companies, like Unilever and Conde Nast, have started to work towards higher viewability results. While striving for a higher percentage is a good thing, the IAB is correct in pointing out that 100% is unrealistic.
“It’s irrational to expect every ad in a campaign will be 100% viewable. It’s counterproductive for anyone in the ecosystem to insist otherwise,” Sherrill Mane, the IAB’s senior vice president of industry services said during the meeting this week. Regardless of the new technology introduced this year, it's likely that the debate between vendors, publishers, and advertisers is going to continue.
