You Got Served!
For an industry that has so many acronyms, it’s no surprise we have industry coalitions with funny abbreviations as well- IAB, ANA, 4A’s- all working on the 3MS, Making Measurement Make Sense. But for an industry as segmented as online media and publishing, who are they making sense for? Although there are five guiding principles to consider within the 3MS, a large push in the industry is centered around the first principle: Move to a “viewable impressions” standard and count real exposures online.
What’s the Big Idea? The IAB is determined to assure advertisers their branding budgets, typically flushed into television, are safe AND measurable online.
Who’s leading the charge? The IAB, comprised of more than 500 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. The ANA, whose membership includes 450 companies with 10,000 brands that collectively spend over $250 billion in marketing communications and advertising. And the 4A’s, comprised of agencies with a leading objective to promote and further the interests of advertising agencies and other marketing communications organizations.
The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) and the Online Publishers Association (OPA) are listed as supporters of the initiative.
What does this initiative change? If a tree falls in a forest and no one heard it, the tree did not make a noise. Or in this instance, if an adserver made 1000 ad calls, but only 750 of the ads 1) completely rendered and 2) were more than 50% in view 3) for more than 1 second, then only 750 ads count as viewable impressions.
So now what? That’s a really great question. Momentum is building. Comscore, C3 and RealVu have products ready to support this measurement initiative. (Among the three platforms putting forth a product, RealVu is the only one with full Media Rating Council accreditation; while C3 and ComScore are in the process of applying for it.) Case studies have been formed and it seems, in some instances, as many as 68% of all display ads served are not ‘viewed’ by consumers according to the current IAB viewable impression standard. However, according to C3 it also seems that when only taking into account viewable impressions, the true click-through rates on banner ads are 179% higher than those reported for marketers basing their measurement using gross number of impressions. Will we see media buyers only willing to be pay for Viewable Impressions? Will we start to see the time required increase for a viewable impression? Will we see publishers garner higher revenues from this new ‘premium’ inventory? All are really good questions that only time will tell.
Online advertising has definitely seen its share of buying trends and the amount of data available pre and post campaign certainly hasn’t hurt us. The idea of spending branding dollars online seems a little passé now that we can target based on purchasing behavior and deeper demographic information, but ultimately this is coupled with the desire to better understand attribution. Typically it is assumed brand dollars mean splashy invasive units and audience means strategic purchasing of standard media. What we are looking at is an attempt for these two spending ideologies to converge in a way we haven’t previously seen enforced. As publishers, we should prepare for this shift back to brand dollars, whatever that new definition may be.