Dive Brief: 

• Unilever— one of the world's largest marketers and media-buying companies—believes that the industry standards set by advertising trade groups for ad viewability just aren't high enough. 
• The standards suggested by the advertising trade groups are 50% of a display ad viewed for one second and 50% of video in view for two seconds. 
• Unilever counts only display ads that are 100% is visible in browser and 100% of video player is visible, clicked by the users to start rather than auto-played, and at least half the ad is played. 

Dive Insight:

The "opportunity to see" is the reasoning behind some trade groups that suggest less stringent viewability standards. Unilever's comments come at a time when the industry is undecided on what is best indicator for viewbility, because of the shift away from the CTR to widespread ad fraud. Asking for a real live human to see the ad isn't that much to require, but the industry might not be ready to require it yet. Though Unilever has enough weight that its demanding of higher standards for its media and ad buys could actually help to shift industry standards as a whole.