Viewability Impressions Do Matter

You have to understand that when an ad is served it does not mean it is certainly seen by users. You published your ads, and your online impression served on certain web pages, and that’s good. However, are you confident to say your ads are viewed? Being seen means everything for an ad, right?

Fortunately, Google has worked on a Viewable Impressions standard partnering with the industry since 2013. When the Media Rating Council lifted its Viewable Impression Advisory in 2014, marketers and advertisers switched their focus from served impressions to viewable impressions, which is measured by the Viewability.

Viewability helps determine how likely it is that an ad was actually seen by a user. Defined by the Media Rating Council, a display ad is considered viewable when 50% of an ad’s pixels are in view on the screen for a minimum of one second.

Factors of Display Viewability

Let’s take a look at the factors affecting the extent to which ads are seen. The following is based on the research of 5 Factors of Display Viewability by Google.

1. State of publisher viewability

A small number of publishers are serving most of the non-viewable impressions

2. Page position

The most viewed position is not at the top of the page but instead is right above the fold, which is part of a web page that is visible before scrolling down.

3. Ad size

Ads that are vertical can stay on the page longer when you scroll, and the dimensions with the highest viewability rates are 120X240 (55.6%), 240X400 (54.9%), and 160×600 (53.7%).

4. An ad above the fold does not mean always viewable

Averagely, only 68% ads above-the-fold impressions are viewable, while the percentage is 40% for those below-the-fold impressions.

5. Viewability varies across industries

Content that draws the user’s attention has the highest viewability.

So, How Do I Increase My Google Ads Viewability?

In the rest of this post, we will talk about some best technical practices to improve ad viewability advised by the team of Google. A downloadable PDF file can also be found here.