AdMaster quantifies the value of 'viewable impressions' with new measurement metric

As the internet has become the mainstream media for advertising, brands are increasingly concerned about the impact of ineffective ad impressions, according to Calvin Chan, the company's chief operating officer.

In addition to pre-roll and display banner ads, other formats such as 'crazy ads' and video pop-ups have emerged, creating a more complicated advertising environment in which advertisers have little ability to determine whether humans are actually seeing their ads.

In Europe, the advertising ecosystem already uses 'viewable impressions' to calculate the effects of advertising exposure, and Chan said AdMaster is formalising the currency metric in China, following half a year of repeated testing through algorithms and models combined with historical data from 21 campaigns. The past campaigns cover the automotive, beverage, cosmetics, food, alcohol and clothing industries.

The system gives weightings to the size and type of an ad, its position on a webpage and the historically accepted clickthrough rates (CTR) in assessing a 'viewable impression'.

Admaster combines this metric with 'softer' indicators from consumer feedback about brand awareness, brand likeability and purchase intention to form a new, unified metric it calls 'advertising brand index' (ABI). These metrics are now formally applied to actual advertising projects on AdChina's DSP (demand-side platform).

The data solutions provider claims this "more scientific and accurate method" is a new milestone in the evaluation of digital advertising.

Main competitor Miaozhen Systems did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.