Debunking the CTR to Find Truth in Viewability

"Viewability" is a buzzword du jour in the ad-tech world, yet very few advertisers are actually using viewability metrics to measure campaign performance and set benchmarks. In fact, though click-thru rate (CTR) has been widely panned as ineffective for measuring the true value of the campaign, it continues to be the dominant metric across the industry.

Why we’re so stubbornly clinging to an antiquated metric remains a mystery. We know that CTR can be easily manipulated; that clicks say nothing about engagement and that on mobile, CTR may be “completely unrelated or even negatively correlated” to other measures capturing metrics like calls, directions and store visits.

For years, brand marketers have demanded metrics relevant to their needs, rather than those direct response has traditionally offered. In 2009, in fact, Bain and the IAB pinpointed metrics as one of the key obstacles preventing brands from moving more budget from offline to digital. How is it that in 2015, as brand advertising continues to accelerate across digital, we’ve yet to get the industry onboard with viewability?

We know CTR just isn’t working for us anymore. How can we encourage both sides of our industry to adopt viewability metrics for standard performance measurement?

 Viewability’s Slow Start and Our Love Affair with CTR

Earlier in the year, data from Maxifier showed that viewability was slow to take off; just 3% of campaign goals in Q3 2014 were focused on viewability.

The thing is, CTR still makes a fairly decent metric in some cases and it works across channels. In general, it’s:

• Already accepted and easy for all parties to understand.
• Easy to measure, work out and express as a value.
• Easy to compare across campaigns, establish a benchmark and track over time.

There’s just one problem: it’s not meaningful in display advertising for brands.

Our fear of the unknown, coupled with a lack of credible alternatives (and not discounting how utterly ingrained CTR is), are preventing us from coming together as an industry to promote a standard viewability metric.

We Need Standardization in Viewability

In his analysis of an xAd and Nielsen study last year, Marketing Land’s Greg Sterling posited that, “At very best CTR may be a directional indicator of consumer awareness and interest. But if CTR is used at all it should not be used by itself.”

Viewability is increasingly recognized as important, but it’s not a silver bullet -- looking to this new metric as the catchall in the same way marketers had elevated CTR isn’t useful, either.

The measurement of viewability itself might be influenced by factors like cross-domain iframes, video players, webkits, and more. It cannot be measured in advance, so when you buy impressions in RTB, you cannot know whether they’ll be seen. To complicate matters further, we’re also seeing advertisers demand different parameters from those agreed as the standard definition as determined by the three associations in the 3MS working group: the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The group, under the leadership of the Media Ratings Council, calls for:

• desktop display ads to be considered viewable if 50% of their pixels are in view for a minimum of one second;
• for desktop video, that standard is 50% for 2 seconds;
• for larger desktop ad units, 30% of pixels in view for 1 second constitutes a Viewable ad.

However, clients may ask for five seconds or even 10 to consider an ad viewable. Each vendor has a different approach and the difference in results can vary enormously, from their methodology in measuring viewability, to the inventory they can actually measure, to precisely what it is they’re measuring.

Even the IAB recognizes this is hindering its uptake. Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO at the IAB, has commented, “Instead of being the solution this proliferation has been an utter obstacle."

The shift from served impressions to viewable impressions is necessary and it’s well underway -- advertisers are demanding it and the industry needs it to attract more brand budgets online.

So how can we get there successfully?

Success with Viewability

As a concept, viewability sounds great, but what does it actually mean and what does it look like when used effectively?

Viewability Must Be Actionable

It’s been challenging to effectively use viewability to help improve live campaigns. However, we’re now able to optimize live campaigns to a viewability goal, to drive the performance that advertisers are looking for.

The Atlantic, for example, has been using optimization on in-view rates to ensure that campaigns are optimized to run on the best performing sites, positions, and formats. At the same time, they are also able to factor in performance optimization, to achieve specific campaign performance KPIs.

Standardization Among Vendors

There are a wealth of different viewability vendors approved with the Media Ratings Council and another dozen seeking accreditation. What we’re seeing is a repeat of the scenario around online advertising verification, where there were a multitude of providers (e.g.,: DoubleVerify, Adsafe/Integral Ad Science, Proximic, etc.), but only a few became preferred companies.

We're slowly seeing this in connection with viewability, with one or two companies seemingly becoming vendors of choice. Achieving this will help accelerate the uptake of it, as confusion over contracts will be dispelled and the true value of viewability realized.

Viewability and CTR Work Better Together

While viewability is becoming increasingly complex to optimize to, we are also beginning to see brands/agencies demanding that viewability targets and performance metrics be achieved concurrently. Beyond simply wanting a viewability goal, they want branding and performance metrics to work together.

Much of our collective dissatisfaction with CTR may very well be due to our over-reliance on it as a one-stop, cure-all metric for everything. CTR is no more a performance marketing panacea than viewability is for brand marketing; just as CTR must be used judiciously, publishers still need to work at inspiring action from viewability reports to make the data a valuable asset.