WPP's Xaxis promises near "100 per cent" viewability in Asia

According to Xaxis, Viewpoint sets a “new standard for digital advertising” in Asia-Pacific and guarantees advertisers close to 100 per cent ad viewability online. The product is now available in Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.

“Viewability has become a big thing at Xaxis,” said Michel de Rijk, CEO of Xaxis Asia-Pacific. “The industry needs to clean up the mess that’s been created. There’s lot of fraudulent and messy stuff going on in the region.”

In addition to finding success as a product, de Rijk hopes Viewpoint will make people in the industry more aware of viewability standards and generate more discussion on the topic. To develop the product, Xaxis analysed more than 6,000 campaigns and ad placements.

“We started looking at all this for our own business intelligence,” said de Rijk. “But now after joining the dots in the data, we can see where the most viewable ads are, and this is our premium inventory.”

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According to de Rijk, based on the KPIs of a campaign, Xaxis will still trade in an open exchange to help clients get “extended reach”. However, Xaxis Viewpoint will give advertisers access to a pool of inventory with superior ad viewability that offers direct access to the industry’s “premium publishers” such as Microsoft, part of Xaxis Marketplace.

While de Rijk said these ad placement may not be 100 per cent viewable, they’ll be close to it and much higher than the industry standard in Asia.

“I think the IAB standards are on the soft side: 50 per cent viewable for one second,” said de Rijk. “Our colleagues in the US don’t accept that standard, but going for 100 per cent goes too far. And it’s hard for the industry in APAC."

When it comes to making the guarentee of viewability, for example, if a client buys 5 million impressions, Xaxis will continue to serve ads until it delivers 5 million viewed impressions. The standard of viewability is based on the IAB standards. The logic is to offer clients ad placements that are guaranteed to be viewed, but at a premium price.  

While with other types of viewability guarantees, advertisers don't get charged for ads that aren't seen, de Rijk said there's little value in that since users don't interact with the ads.