THE AD

VIEWABILITY What is viewability?

Why should I care?

HANDBOOK
How do I improve it?

for w eb
pub lis hers
 Why Read Ad viewability has been one of the hottest
topics in ad tech for the past few years. It
this Guide? is alarming for the industry, and especially
the buy side, to realize that not all ads that
are served are actually seen by users.

Despite the fact that the concept of ad

viewability has been around for a while,
publishers often still struggle with basic
questions, such as: What's a good
viewability score? How can I improve it?

We created this handbook to clearly

explain ad viewability and its underlying
concepts, so that publishers have the
confidence to choose the right approach
towards assessing and improving their ad
viewability for fueling revenue growth.

02 | THE AD VIEWABILITY HANDBOOK ADPUSHUP.COM

 What is Ad
Just because an ad was served, does not
guarantee it was visible to the user. Ad
Viewability? viewability is a metric that helps determine
whether or an ad had the chance to be seen.

The ability to measure ad viewability allows

publishers to package high-viewability
inventory on their sites, and sell it at a
premium in programmatic auctions.

A good, or a bad, viewability score, is usually

FINDINGS
correlated to the overall reputation of ad
FROM GOOGLE
↓ inventory. Buyers tend to prefer publishers
who have a high viewability score, so that
The industry- they can justify their ad spend.
wide average
viewability For example, if six ads were served on a
score is 43.9%,
page, but the user did not scroll down far
while good
enough to see the bottom two, those
quality sites
impressions would be considered non-
average 50.2%
viewable, setting the viewability score at
66.66%, using the following formula:

Total viewable impressions, i.e., 4

----------------------------------- x 100
Total impressions, i.e., 6

03 | THE AD VIEWABILITY HANDBOOK ADPUSHUP.COM

 Why Should I
You should care about improving your ad
viewability score because it makes your
Care? inventory more valuable to buyers, while
delivering a better experience to your users.

Unlike offline ads, where impressions are not

trackable, loss of viewability in online
impressions directly affects revenue. Here's
how viewability score can affect you:

Brand credibility: Inventories with low-

“
viewability score are considered non-
premium, diluting the publisher's brand.
Earning potential: Low-viewability
inventories witness lower bids and less
Half the money I competition, reducing earning potential.
spend on Buyer attrition: Buyers that witness poor
advertising is campaign performance reduce spends,
wasted; the and eventually, pull back completely from
trouble is I don’t investing in low-viewability inventory.
know which half.
JOHN In the next section, we'll explain how
WANAMAKER
viewability is measured. An impression might
as well be considered non-viewable if:

1. The user has installed an ad blocker

2. The user did not scroll down far enough
3. The ad in viewport for less than 1 second
4. The page was rendered by a traffic bot

04 | THE AD VIEWABILITY HANDBOOK ADPUSHUP.COM

 Measuring
According to the IAB and MRC, an ad
impression is considered viewable if:
Viewability
50% of an ad’s pixels are in view for at
least one second, for desktop display ad
50% of an ad’s pixels are in view for at
least two seconds, for desktop video ad

ACTIVE VIEW You might have heard of the term "Active

FORMULA View" impressions—descriptive of a
↓ proprietary metric that Google uses across its
line of advertising products, intended to
Measurable imp.
measure an ad's real-time effectiveness on
---------- x 100
Eligible imp. an impression-by-impression basis.

Viewable imp. Google further segments Active View

---------- x 100
Measurable imp.
impressions into the following categories:
Eligible impressions: impressions with an
Active View tag and have successfully
communicated with Google’s servers
Measurable impressions: segment of
eligible impressions that can actually be
measured with the Active View tag
Viewable impressions: segment of
measurable impressions that are counted
‘viewable’ as per MRC standards

05 | THE AD VIEWABILITY HANDBOOK ADPUSHUP.COM

 4-Week
Before you overhaul your website, you'll
need to take a step back and find areas of
Viewability improvement. We call this exercise, the 4-
Audit Week Viewability Audit. Here's how it goes.

Step 1 Commit units for the audit, e.g.,

large rectangle on the left, Leaderboard,
etc. Make sure you exclude ads that are

“
not supposed to be a part of the audit

Step 2 Note control attributes like ad

size, type, placement, latency, etc.

If you can't
Step 3 Gather internal data (or using
measure it, you
3rd party data tools) to record baseline
can't improve it.
viewability data, ideally for four weeks
PETER DRUCKER

Step 4 Once you have sufficient data,

analyze the baseline data to prioritize
the set of ad sizes, types, or placements
that should be the focus of your overall
viewability improvement plan

Here’s a sample template that can be used to monitor the inventory of ad

units that fall under your 4-Week Viewability Audit:

Pro tip
You can simultaneously run two audits of one site with different layouts,
from the same starting to end date to see which variation works best.

06 | THE AD VIEWABILITY HANDBOOK ADPUSHUP.COM

 How do I The primary levers that influence ad

Increase
viewability are site design, page fixes, and
the right technology solution implementation.
Viewability? Here’s what you can do to:

1 IMPROVE PAGE DESIGN & LAYOUT

The insights gathered from the 4-Week Viewability Audit will help you get started.
Analyze which placements get you the highest viewability scores. The output received
from the analysis can be used as design input for improving viewability ㄧad size/type
(horizontal or vertical), placement (Above the Fold or Below the Fold), number of ads, etc.

In this phase, you may want to consider using a design expert to implement the results of
your experiment and ad ops experts who can execute an educated vCPM pricing
strategy best suited for your site. In other cases, you may also consider developing a
responsive site/using responsive ads, which might help you further improve viewability.

2 REDUCE PAGE/AD LATENCY

An ad becomes viewable after it fully renders. Ideally, the next step for you should be to
assess your average page speed numbers and try to measure its impact on viewability.
If you look into the audit, the baseline data should also help you identify the latency of
particular ad units; more specifically, their ad rendering time.

Usually, ads rendered by third party servers have a higher render time, to counter which,
you should select a plan that aligns with your revenue goals—check if they use a CDN.
Implementations like enabling asynchronous ad calls, avoiding passbacks, and executing
site speed optimizations can also help improve page speed and reduce render time.

07 | THE AD VIEWABILITY HANDBOOK ADPUSHUP.COM

 How do I
Increase
Viewability?

3 EXPLORE NEW TECHNOLOGY

There are new and evolving ad tech solutions that are known to accelerate website
revenue, while also solving technical challenges on a publisher’s website. One of the
solutions, ad refresh, helps increase the number of impressions served per session.
However, it is advisable to configure refresh keeping CPM and user experience in mind.

Moving on, there is lazy loading that allows you to render ads only when they reach the
device viewport. Also alternatively referred to as "smart loading", it helps bolster buyers'
confidence in the publishers' inventory ㄧknowing that they only get to pay for
impressions that are actually seen by users. It's a win-win for both parties.

?
DID YOU KNOW?
The average publisher viewability for video ads is 66.1% and usually
industries like Gaming, Internet and Telecom, and Music
have the highest viewability.
SOURCE: THINK WITH GOOGLE

08 | THE AD VIEWABILITY HANDBOOK ADPUSHUP.COM

 Final
The journey of improving ad viewability
ㄧ
involves testing, measuring, analyzing, and
Thoughts finally, reiterating. To do so, it’s imperative
that you first conduct a viewability audit that
helps you set a foundation. This will help you
gain actionable insights, such as:

Ad unit 300x250 on /blog and /business-

stories pages have low ad render time and
get better viewability, hence this size can
be the focus on other pages as well
Ad unit 728x90 might need
reconsideration in terms of the placement
and ad render time
Ad unit 970x250 on /tech-news might be
suitable for refresh as the page receives
high user engagement time on site

From a viewability point of view, it's best to

have data in hand and then make educated
decisions, instead of doing guesswork.

Lastly, from a revenue optimization point of

view, it is important to find the right vendor
ㄧsomeone who can help strike a healthy
balance between revenue growth and UX.

09 | THE AD VIEWABILITY HANDBOOK ADPUSHUP.COM

ABOUT
ADPUSHUP
AdPushup was formed in 2014 with a simple
idea: While A/B testing was popular, no one
was using it to optimize publisher-side ad
layouts. Our founders built a prototype to
get proof-of-concept, which resulted in
double-digit revenue growth for our first
client. Since then, we’ve garnered top media
mentions, raised multiple rounds of funding,
and expanded to being a one-stop revenue
optimization platform for web publishers.
AdPushup is a  Microsoft Ventures backed
startup and winner of NASSCOM Emerge 50
award. AdPushup is also an IAB member.
Today, we optimize over 4 billion monthly ad
impressions for our 300+ partners.