Advertisers should pay for viewable impressions, not just served impressions: DG MediaMind

DG argues that the standard of measurement is a valid and necessary one and that served impressions is a less valid measurement compared with viewable impressions. For example, the report found that rich media ads that had a viewability of 63 per cent showed a 54.5 per cent boost in click-through rates (CTR) versus total served ads.

“Before the viewability metric, advertisers did not have a standard way to detect if an advertisement even had the chance of being seen by consumers,” said Ricky Liversidge, chief marketing officer, DG.  “The adoption of viewability as a standard metric is another step in arming advertisers with the knowledge they need to measure and execute successful digital campaigns.”

The most viewable rich media ad formats were floating ads, wallpaper ads and commercial breaks, according to the report, indicating that these highly interactive and persistent formats are valuable for brands using viewability as a key performance indicator.

In addition, the report include a comprehensive analysis of complete 2012 engagement metrics from more than 600 billion display ad impressions from 47 countries worldwide.

South Asia & Southeast Asia

As a developing market with large and inexperienced internet users, performance metrics tend to be higher than more mature markets like Western Europe, the US and Japan. Standard banners had a CTR of 0.12 per cent, rich media came in at 0.32 per cent and in-stream video CTR was 3.92 per cent. 

East Asia (Taiwan, China, Japan, Hong Kong and Korea)

Despite China being the behemoth in the group, the largest country by impressions served during 2012 was Japan. Japan is also accounted for in the bulk of in-stream video served by MediaMind in the region.

In most cases, the region experienced better click-through rates (CTRs) than North America, particularly formats like standard banners (0.10 per cent), rich media (0.21 per cent), in-stream video (3.50 per cent) and mobile (2.04 per cent). Within rich media formats, expandable banners and floating ads had high CTRs well, at 0.36 per cent and 0.88 per cent, respectively.