When it comes to video advertising, viewability has always been somewhat the baseline expectation for ad creatives and a key staple of the overall video ad effectiveness.



However, the increasingly growing volume of ad fraud is currently shifting the global paradigm for measuring video ad performance.

The primary industry demands include higher precision and transparency in video ad performance measurement, better ad fraud protection, and certainly stricter brand safety standards, in a whole.

Redefining Industry-Wide Viewability Standards

Quite predictably, viewability is commonly known as perhaps the core metric for measuring video ad performance and ad optimization. Consequently, the worldwide adoption of industry-wide viewability standards has always been a matter of primary importance in online video advertising.

Ever since 2014, when MRC introduced a common definition of video ad viewability, which implied at least 50% pixels of the video ad creative being in-view for two consecutive seconds, the global measurement standards have not changed much until recently.

Yet, as the video advertising market has been undergoing substantial changes, e.g. the introduction of outstream video ad formats, programmatic ad buying and CTV advertising, just to name a few, the world’s demand to reassess qualified viewability criteria and redefine industry-wide standards has been increasing, too.

The good news is, whereas the new regulation, regarding duration weighting has been postponed until 2021, some positive changes have already arrived.

In particular, just recently MRC has released the new specification for cross-media ad audience measurement.

Namely, while the newly-announced alterations haven’t affected viewability measurement standards in the digital-only video ad segment, changes for cross-media channels (linear & digital) are huge: the qualified viewability threshold has been changed to 100% pixels of a video ad creative in-view.

Ad Viewability vs. Ad Fraud

Undoubtedly, the evolution of the global digital video ad industry over the past years has come a long way. According to DV Global Insights 2019 report, video ads have become ~3% more viewable across platforms over the past year, which obviously proves we’re moving in the right direction.

Unfortunately, in spite of this consistent positive trend, the market is still falling short to overcome some serious challenges, e.g. advertising fraud.

As the Global Insights report unveils, the amount of ad fraud in CTV and mobile app advertising segments is up 120% over the past year, while the number of brand safety issues and incidents in the latter segment is even higher, i.e. up 194%, if compared to the 2018 data.

In addition, the latest study by Juniper Research forecasts advertisers are to lose about $42 000 000 000 only in 2019, due to ad fraud incidents.

More importantly, this number will only grow further in the upcoming years, i.e. up to the insane amount of $100 000 000 000 by 2023, as the fraudulent practices become gradually more complex with time.

In Search of New Ad Measurement Strategies

The truth is, even though viewability is still the key performance indicator in online video advertising, not all viewable video ad impressions are fraud-free and brand-safe. Hence, measuring viewable-only rate is, in fact, insufficient for cross-media video ad performance measurement.

This is actually why, many market players have been gradually shifting their focus from the so-called vanity metrics, to the more actionable insights, hoping to optimize their business outcomes.

In this respect, AdPlayer.Pro has recently added support of MOAT Analytics* to provide our Supply and Demand partners with greater precision & transparency, in terms ad fraud protection and ad viewability tracking.