Beyond the Fold: A Viewability Webinar

A webinar from

Beyond the foldTactics for analyzing and

improving ad viewability on

your website.

Meet our hosts

Babac VafaeyVP Business Operations, Sovrn Europe

Kevin GentryProduct Manager, Sovrn

“An ad is viewable if at least 50% of ad pixels are in view for greater than one second.”

- IAB Standard

What is viewability?

Do viewable ads receive higher CPMs?

Yes! Viewable ads see higher

CPMs and higher conversion

rates.

Publishers see 28-54% uplift in

CPM. (OnScroll)

Viewable ads saw conversion rates

improve by as much as 50%.

(Google)

Some buyers add viewability logic

into their buying algorithms. Some

optimize to viewable attribution

models.

5 Factors of Viewability Sovrn spends 2% of its revenue combatting

fraud.

FRAUD

20% of users don’t see the top of the page, as

they scroll before the page fully loads.

(Chartbeat)

LATENCY

The larger the ad, the less likely it is to be in

view.

AD SIZE

1

2

3

Web design is hugely important for viewability.

PAGE LAYOUT

Publishers more and more have to think

mobile-first. With video, placement in video

content and the presence of audio are big

viewability factors.

MOBILE & VIDEO

You must account for all five of these factors to

improve viewability across your site.

GOTTA GET ‘EM ALL

Viewability is more complex than layout alone.

4

5

How to improve viewability on your site.

Uncover areas of strength

and opportunity on your

site.

MEASURE & BENCHMARK PLAN YOUR APPROACH

Use your findings to create a

multi-faceted viewability plan.

Let’s dig into the two prongs of a

viewability strategy:

Create a new query using the query tool.

CREATE A QUERY

SELECT QUERY DIMENSIONS

EXPORT QUERY DATA

Date range: go for at least 3 months

Now let’s use this data to build an ad unit viewability

map for your site.

Dimensions: Select “Tags” from “Inventory Segments”

to break down viewability by the AdX tags you are

using in your ad server and differentiate performance

by unit.

Metrics: Include standard metrics along with “active

view measureable” and “active view viewable.”

How to measure viewability using

Google AdX

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2

3

Other viewability tools

Not using Google AdX?

If you aren’t using, there are a few other tools you

can leverage to pull similar metrics.

Here is a template we recommend for creating a viewability map report for the units on your site.

Build a viewability map

Page Unit Viewable % ATF/BTF Render Time Page Latency CPM Fill % 30 Day Revenue

/home 300x250 92% ATF 200ms - $2.30 50% $3,480

/top-stories 300x600 68% BTF 300ms 350ms $0.80 22% $804

/latest 300x250 73% BTF 400ms - $1.13 60% $2,876

/article-page 970x250 82% ATF 200ms - $1.76 51% $5,012

How should you design your site to maximize viewability?

Financial Times combined user data to sell advertisers 100% viewable ads based on time

seen. That way they took their readers two most important attributes (time engaged on

content, demographic information on that person) and sold them as Cost Per Hour.

Sticky ads - content blocks that follow you down the page

What’s next in viewability?

Testing ad to content

correlation

Pick an existing page on your site –

don’t change anything

CONTROL

VARIANT

KEY METRICS

Duplicate your Control page and

remove one BTF zone

Compare CPM, Viewable %, Viewable

CPM, Fill Rate, Ad Render Time for A &

B – pick a winner

A

B

#

Site Design Testing the number of ad units on a page and the ad to

content ratio can help you hone in on the right number of

zones to boost viewability % and revenue.

Viewability on

mobileThe average viewability on mobile much lower than

desktop.

• Need to use mobile-specific formats

• Less is more with mobile. Use fewer formats that don’t

take as long to load

• Sticky header or sticky header that stays with user.

Video and viewability

1. User-initiated videos maximize viewability.

2. No autoplay videos below the fold.

3. Outstream video is always InView with the right partner.

Here are the main ways you can ensure your video content is viewable.

Latency

Use partners with historically fast-

serving ads.

PARTNERS

TRACK LATENCY

USE FAST PREROLL

If you’re losing page views due to

video ads, they’re too slow.

Work with partners whose preroll doesn’t

cause latency. Video retention rates will

drop.

1

2

3

How to avoid latency with

video ads

Fraud prevention

Bot traffic and other

fraudulent traffic hurts ad

viewability.

Here are a few tools we recommend checking out to

track down and stamp out any fraudulent traffic to

your domain.

Questions?

Thanks for joining us!

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