Do you know exactly how many people are viewing your online ads? No? Well it’s sad to say that it’s probably a lot less people than you think. In fact, a study by Google found that more than half (56.1%) of online display ad impressions are notseen by consumers. This means that you may have effectively been throwing your digital ad money away.

IMPRESSIONS VERSES VIEWABILITY

Advertisers have traditionally used impressions as a metric to measure ad performance. Yet many of these impressions result from page visits in which the visitor never actually sees the ads, either because they’re displayed too low, or worse — the impression is down to a bot.

The way around this is to embrace ad viewability – which looks at whether an ad is actually in-view to readers on publishers’ websites. Advertisers that embrace ad viewability over impressions will learn which placements are worth the investment.

Above-the-fold (ATF) impressions, for example, do not promise ad viewability. In fact, less than half of ATF impressions are actually viewable, due to the fact that: Many visitors start scrolling down as soon as they visit a page and see top ads for less than a second and ad vendors self-categorize what constitutes “above” and “below” the fold, which can persuade clients into over-paying for a less-than-suitable placement.

GET IN THE RTB’S SEAT AND ENERGIZE YOUR AD BUYS