In case you haven’t noticed, digital marketing performance
is more important than ever. With advertiser’s increasing need for
accountability and measurement tools evolving to meet that need, there is major
and growing interest in associated ad analytics or adverlytics. More
specifically, display viewability measurement and attribution are hot topics.
Yet, before the explosion in ad
viewability technologies and an enthusiastic trade
group response to standardize (
IAB,
MRC),
viewthrough remains complicated and mysterious.
Even among experienced digital marketers, agencies and
analytics professionals, there is often confusion around these terms with many
people using the terms wrong or inter-changeably. They each describe important
steps in the digital advertising funnel with viewability an important first
step towards measuring exposure and viewthrough gauging post-exposure latent
response. It makes a lot of sense to use these tracking methods together.
Viewthrough Defined
Display viewthrough measurement has been around since the
late 90s and the advent of agency or
3rd party ad serving (3PAS). That means an advertiser’s digital
media agency centrally manages the serving of their display ad campaign across
multiple Web sites and/or ad networks. Typical tools used for this purpose
include Sizmek, Pointroll, Google DoubleClick and Atlas. The beauty of this
approach is having one report that consolidates one or multiple campaign
performance metrics across multiple media vendors. The advertiser-centric
approach and even allows for performance analysis by placement, ad size or
creative treatment across media vendors. Prior to this, agencies had to collect
the reports from each media vendor and doing cross-dimension analysis required
advanced Excel manipulation. Included in the consolidated report was usually
impressions, clicks, media cost a calculated click rate and effective CPM (cost
per thousand). Potentially average frequency of ad delivery could also be
reported.
How Viewthrough Works
As a more advanced option, the ad server could generate a
special beacon tag which could be coded on an important digital event on the
client’s Web site, e.g. a visit to the home page, playing a game, initiating a
particular download and most obviously the rendering of an order thank you
page. The latter being a revenue-generating conversion. The way it works is
simple enough: the ad server site code that is placed is page-specific and
named in a certain way with a certain ID. When that beacon tag fires, the ad
server increments the count for that specific ad. The ad server uses clicker
cookies to distinguish between clickthrough conversions and viewthrough
conversions by the presence of a click cookie that is served to the browser if
they click an ad. Generally, a viewthrough can be simply a visit to the target
site or it can be an actual ecommerce conversion.
Fig 1. Viewthrough Process
In practice this meant that digital advertisers were no
longer limited to the more direct-response oriented clickthrough rate for measuring
display campaign performance. With viewthrough they could also analyze the
passive impact of display which is more difficult to measure since it is not
immediate and is harder to measure than clickthroughs which use appended query
string parameters in the landing page clickthrough URL. That said, viewthrough
measurement from the ad server is not enough as unscrupulous ad networks
learned to do what is called cookie-stuffing to take advantage of affiliate
advertising systems.
Site Analytics
Technology Matters
Going beyond simplistic, ad server viewthrough measurement
is not easy for digital marketers and technology choices matter. The
complexities of generating and managing ad server site tags has also made
ubiquitous measurement operationally difficult. What’s more ad server counting
of viewthrough was an afterthought. The solution to better viewthrough
measurement is ingesting ad server data into the site analytics system where site
taxonomy, visitor uniqueness, multiple marketing channels and event level
tracking infrastructure already exists. Another option are the better
algorithmic attribution systems; a couple even integrate display viewability
into their solution (ideal).
The reality is that there is are a few site analytics
platforms that integrate with the ad servers in the market today. All are not
created equal, not independent of media and there are significant differences
in the methodologies. The integrations can be complex but well worth it for
advertisers spending more than $10MM per year in display media. However, the
learnings are significant when it comes to understanding customer’s digital
path to the target Web sites and the latent effects of display ads
(banner/video/mobile).
Last, a word of caution: the best way to really understand display
media from a viewthrough standpoint is through periodic incrementality
analysis, i.e. test and control.
Viewability Defined
Display viewability is a newer capability for digital
marketers that has really caught on over the last five years. Essentially,
display viewability leverages Web technology that can determine how much of an
ad is “in view” of the user’s browser window and for how long. While there is
some additional complexity involved, simply put this offers a way for digital
advertisers to really understand the quality of the ad inventory that they are
buying from Web publishers and ad networks.
Fig 2. Viewability Process
Industry Reaction to
Measuring Ad Viewability
Not surprisingly, ad viewability has met with resistance
from publishers and even media agencies though it is of obvious interest to
advertisers. By better managing viewability, advertisers can ensure they
maximize the value of their display spend in terms of both raising awareness
and driving a measureable response (clickthrough, viewthrough, engagement,
conversions). Unlike viewthrough which languished for years as somewhat of a
stepchild metric, The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Ratings
Council (MRC) stepped in early on viewability to create some early standards:
50% or more of an ad for at least 1 second. Advertisers can certainly raise the
bar here but there is at least a baseline.
Ad viewability is fairly easy to implement on a display campaign
but can often be challenging to operationally integrate into media performance
reporting. As a best practice, having an independent analytics team pilot test
and benchmark current performance will help gauge how much upside potential
there might be.
Rising Tide Lifts All
Ships
It stands to reason that you cannot have a clickthrough
without an ad first being viewable. If an advertiser were to increase their ad
viewability rate from 50% to 75% that would likely mean the number of clicks
and therefore clickthrough rate should increase. Similarly, you cannot have
legitimate viewthrough without an ad first being viewable. Increasing ad
viewability rates should also benefit viewthrough rates as well.
- Viewthrough
- It’s all about response measurement. Advertisers ultimately should be
very keen on measuring viewthrough from display media if they are interested in
Web site engagement and even more so if an online conversion is possible
(offline measurement is also possible).
- Viewability
– Think front-end of the advertising process, i.e. the inputs. The focus is on doing
what branding has always sought to do through media campaigns: create an
impression, influence behavior or change preferences.
As you can see, while they are certainly related viewthrough
and viewability are very different. Measuring and optimizing viewability should
be a self-evident way to improve those front-end metrics that will likely also boosts
downstream ones. Viewability and viewthrough can and should work together.
