Google today announced a commitment to only charge for display ads that are viewed.

Speaking during a keynote discussion at SMX East in New York, Brad Bender, vice president of product management of the Google Display Network, said: “I’m pleased to announce that GDN is moving to 100% viewable. We’re going to migrate all of the CPMs in the system to viewable CPMs. All advertisers will be able to see viewable metrics so they can make better decisions.”

The move, which Bender said will be rolled out to GDN users in the next couple weeks, should be welcome news to advertisers worried about the Google provided stat that 56 percent of online display ads never have a chance to be viewed. Among the reasons for their invisibility: they are low on a page, they have scrolled out of view or they are in a tab that isn’t activated.

Bender said Google has already been working on the viewability issue and last year didn’t charge advertisers for 70 billion impressions that weren’t seen.

You can read more about the announcement on Google’s Inside Adwords blog.

More in-depth coverage about Google’s latest ad announcements to come on Marketing Land.