Dive Brief:

• Research from IPG Media Lab, Integral Ad Science and Cadreon on the Media Rating Council (MRC)'s minimum ad viewability standards found that ads that exactly met those standards performed poorly on two key metrics at 3% recall for time in view and 4% recall for percentage of ad in view.
• The research tested standard banner ads, rich media/large format ads, and video banner ads across a wide range of variable such as logo placement and whether the sound was on or off along with percent and time in view.
• One big picture finding from the study was time in view was more significant than percent of ad in view in improving ad recall.

Dive Insight:

The research also uncovered tactics that were particularly effective for different ad formats: video ads with the audio on had a 175% lift in recall for ads below the MRC standard. Meanwhile, placing a logo at the top of the ad increased recall for both time and percent in view. And having only one ad on a page significantly increased ad and message recall. Then, ads placed where they will be readily be seen for a longer period of time was more important than the number of pixels viewed.

"While some impressions under the standard might have impact, we also must consider that the MRC reports a 77.2% change that all ads that meet the standard will eventually exceed it to reach 100% of pixels in view. In the real world, viewability is a moving target," the report explained.