Earlier this week, the Media Ratings Council made its first statement about mobile viewability—a burgeoning concern for publishers and advertisers as more online traffic shifts to smartphones and tablets. The initial guidelines, though temporary, are noteworthy for marking the first time the media ratings watchdog has acknowledged mobile, but marketers aren't clear about how the new criteria will help measure their campaigns.

Through 2015, the MRC is developing a set of guidelines for agencies and publishers used to measure countable mobile impressions. "We believe technical characteristics of the mobile ad serving environment may require the development of new or enhanced methods for determining the viewability of mobile-delivered ads," the MRC said in its statement."The ways in which users interact with content and ads in mobile environments may have different patterns than those observed in the desktop environment, possibly creating differences in where the moment of 'opportunity-to-see' occurs."

In the meantime, the MRC recommends marketers measure mobile viewability the same as desktop. That means 50 percent of display ad pixels need to load in one second on publishers' sites and apps. For video, 50 percent of pixels are required to load in two seconds.

Measuring mobile
While the MRC's recommendations are on an interim basis, Evolve Media's president Brian Fitzgerald said publishers' responsibility of loading 50 percent of a mobile ad—which readers typically skim over in less than a second—isn't logical. "If I have to wait for the full ad to load and then for it to be in view for one second, that's going to be problematic for me," Fitzgerald said, adding that he wished publishers were only accountable for 25 percent of an ad loading. "It sort of begs the question: Why in the world are we moving forward so fast and pushing an interim standard?"

But Ryan Pauley, executive director of revenue operations at Vox Media, said he's not as concerned about the initial standards. "In the short term, it's the right step to make it the same for clean measurement and tracking," he said. Instead, he thinks the standards will spur vendors and publishers to build new types of mobile ads. "I think what it will encourage is further exploration on our side of different ad experiences to take advantage of."

Time Inc. is already thinking about mobile formats that tackle viewability. "We have implemented 'adhesion units' that stick to the bottom of the page and scroll with the consumer as they navigate down through the content," said Time Inc.'s executive director of digital research Rory O'Flynn.

Loaded ads
One of the first steps in developing new guidelines was coining a new term: "loaded ad," meaning what happens when either the pixels or amount of time needed to serve an ad on a page do not line up. Per the MRC, these ads should not be considered a viewable impression.

"The way they phrased it acknowledges that there are a lot of ads that occur that way," said Lyle Schwartz, managing partner at GroupM. "It's showing the difference between what might be served to what the consumer sees, so they are acknowledging that there is a gap there. Initially, I don't think there was or wasn't a gap between delivered ads and viewable ads."

Differentiating mobile and desktop viewability is a murky topic, to be sure, but Carol Chung, svp of media technology at DigitasLBi, said one of the main differences affects ads served in mobile apps versus on mobile sites.

Being able to calculate the exact percentage of how much an ad is seen before someone scrolls past it should, in theory, help agencies make better media buys. "Right now with in-app we can basically see if an ad's in view—period," Chung explained. "What's interesting is that this MRC standard is pressing the percentage definition."

For example, marketers could segment tablet and smartphone ads based on which device users are clicking more promos. "Currently that's really hard," she said. "It's trackable, so we can get it after the fact. But, it's not something that you can target against."

At any rate, as media consumption continues to shift toward mobile, what standards for advertising to on-the-go folks become commonplace looms as a huge development ahead.

Stay tuned.

Google has new insights for the industry worried about viewability, one of the top concerns facing the digital marketing world this year. Google's latest report on the matter digs into what counts as a view when serving a video ad, and what it found was that 54 percent of promotional clips are viewable on phones, tablets and desktops.

That figure didn't include a look at YouTube ad views, which Google broke out, claiming 91 percent viewability. That's not all Google had to report—it even said that viewability isn't the only measure of effectiveness, audibility is pretty good too. Here's a break down:

1. Simply hearing an ad on YouTube can give a brand lift with consumers, so Google says. It found that users who just heard a YouTube ad recalled the brand 33.1 percent more frequently than those who never encountered the spot.
2. Video is eminently more viewable on mobile devices when compared with desktop. Only 53 percent of video ads are considered viewable on desktop, and 83 percent viewable when it comes to mobile Web.
3. Here are the two reasons that account for video ads going unseen: 76 percent of non-viewable ads play in the background in another tab or not on screen at all, and 26 percent of the time a user scrolls by them in less than two seconds.
4. The larger the video player, the more viewable the ad. The largest video ad format registers an 88.6 percent viewability rate, and the smallest size leads to a 19.8 percent rate. It's not just because one is larger than the other, all video ads have to be at least 50 percent on-screen to generate a certified view.
5. Additionally, 33 percent of all video ads use the smaller format player, 300 X 250. Nineteen percent use the largest format of 848 X 477.

If you want a demonstration of how to tell whether a display ad or video ad is viewable, then Google has this handy webpage. Meanwhile, check out this infographic Google put together if you want glean more of its findings.

 

As consumers shift from desktops to smartphones, advertisers want to make sure promos shift with them. To that end, the Media Ratings Council recently released its first guidelines for maximizing mobile viewability. And now ad network Millennial Media is adopting standards that go even further.

Working with Integral Ad Science, Millennial is guaranteeing advertisers that 100 percent of mobile ads served within apps are viewable for one second. That number is far higher than the 50 percent standard recommended by the Media Ratings Council's temporary policy. (The council said it will release official standards by the end of the year.)

Millennial first polled agencies and marketers on its advisory council about their top priorities for mobile advertising in 2015. One of the biggest topics to come out of those conversations was mobile viewability. And executives from Starcom MediaVest, MEC, Initiative, IPG Mediabrands, Camelot Comms and Telefonica UK have all agreed to use Millennial's new measurement tool.

Jason Kelly, president of managed media at Millennial Media, said best practices around mobile viewability are currently limited, but he believes his company is poised to change that.

"The feedback that we got from the market was, 'You guys have been in mobile for almost 10 years, you have the level of scale and technical ability to be able to take this on. Why not?'" Kelly said.

At launch, only interstitial and banner ads served in the U.S. and U.K. will benefit from the new guarantee, with a global roll out expected by the end of this year. The company will guarantee views on its programmatic and mobile ads soon.

That assurance is valuable to marketers, said Steven Traykovski, svp, digital director at MediaVest USA, and mobile viewability should be on par with desktop.

"Mobile in-app viewability has been assumed to be high, but without data to measure it, there were few controls available to marketers to ensure ads were seen," he said. "What we are looking for ultimately is full protection across the mobile ecosystem to include brand safety, protection against non-human traffic as well as metrics on viewability."

Millennial will work with the Media Ratings Council, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the 4A's and the 4Ms (a mobile group within the Association of National Advertisers) to dig into mobile measurement and standards.

"This is just an opportunity to get ahead of [the issue]—it's highly topical," said Millennial CEO Michael Barrett.

When Apple unveils its new iPhone and iOS 9 operating system this week, it could also drop a bomb on publishers by opening the door to ad-blocking technology on its massively popular mobile devices.

Ad blockers have been available on desktop browsers for years, but analysts say Apple's backing has the potential to make ad blocking more mainstream, making it available to a wider group of consumers.

With Apple's new tools, developers can build ad-blocking apps that consumers can download to wipe out ads on mobile sites when using Apple's built-in Safari browser.

Run-of-the-mill ads like banners and display placements are easy targets for ad blockers. But a small test by Adweek of a handful of apps shows that they remove native and branded content, too—putting the business model of publishers that have been at the forefront of native advertising—including BuzzFeed, Business Insider, Forbes and The Atlantic—at risk. (Apple declined to comment for this story.)

"This is the absolute beginning of what I think is going to be a long and passionate debate. Reputable publishers are going to say, 'Hey, this is interesting content, people want to read it, so you shouldn't block it the same way as an ad,'" said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst who covers digital marketing and media.

Typically, publishers' branded-content teams work with marketers to create articles and videos that look like editorial content, but they are published differently through ad networks that provide advertisers with additional data about how campaigns perform.

Ad blockers then assume that the sponsored content is a garden-variety ad and remove it from the page. That's a blow for publishers that have eyed sponsored content as a lucrative alternative to mobile banners that have been deemed ineffective by agencies and brands for years.

Native advertising is expected to bring in $4.3 billion in ad dollars this year, according to eMarketer.

"Should ad blocking become materially greater, we're going to have to figure out a different way to serve native content and report to our advertisers about that content," said Peter Spande, Business Insider's chief revenue officer. "We don't know how bad it will be—we're preparing for the worst and hoping for the best."

BuzzFeed—which helped pioneer the sponsored-content business in 2010—noted that 75 percent of its traffic comes via social media, meaning that consumers see ads on platforms like Facebook and Snapchat that ad blockers cannot hit.

While there could be some snags early on, Raymonde Green, vp of partnerships and investments at DigitasLBi, said he expects for media brands to find quick solutions. "There will be a ton of immediate impact on the scale that we'll see with our campaigns from content that is trying to be blocked, but within months, updates from the app developers [will] allow for workarounds," he said.

Meanwhile, other publishers, like Hearst, are betting that treating branded content the same as editorial will help offset the issue.

Hearst's sponsored articles are posted by way of the same CMS software editors and writers use, meaning that ad blockers do not detect the content as an ad. Brands can choose to place articles and videos on pages without ads surrounding them.

"For the first time, we're having clients who are asking to deliver branded content with no ads," said Todd Haskell, svp and chief revenue officer for the digital arm of Hearst Magazines. "When it's produced at a high quality, the content stands on its own, and it makes the message work really hard."

This story first appeared in the Sept. 7 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Advertisers are starting to demand chargeable mobile impressions from the Media Rating Council after it announced plans in May to address the issue. But with smaller screens and fast-scrolling fingers, mobile viewability is already proving to be more challenging than its desktop counterpart.

Adweek spoke with MRC CEO and executive director George Ivie about what marketers can expect from the upcoming standards, the difference between measuring ads in mobile apps and websites, and how smartphone-size ads render more slowly than desktop promos.

Adweek: What's the latest on crafting mobile viewability standards?
George Ivie: We've been receiving data from mobile practitioners and analyzing it to try to inform the viewability parameters. We've received hundreds of millions of impressions from various providers on an anonymous basis.

It's a similar process to what we did with desktop viewability. It's a very difficult, time-consuming analysis. You need a lot of impressions to do this, and you need fairly accurate record keeping.

Will this standard be drastically different from how you're currently advising marketers to measure mobile?
We don't think it's going to be drastically different—if anything, it might be shorter.

Will holiday marketers be able to purchase ads based on mobile impressions?
No. We hope to have the final guidance released for some type of public comment and review before the end of the year, but that will be after people are doing their purchases for holiday advertising.

What's a key point of difference between desktop and mobile ad viewability?
There's been a concern—and this is bearing out in the data that we're seeing—is that it takes longer in mobile for ads to render on the screen.

A lot of what I've seen is that in mobile environments, people are more attentive. It may be that the viewability transaction will be lower in mobile, but it's clear that the render time is different—it's slower.

In May, the MRC said it planned to measure mobile apps differently than mobile websites with a term coined a "loaded ad." Can you explain what that means?
First of all, it's likely that it's going to be withdrawn.

If you think about how you measure viewability in mobile, a mobile Web environment is almost just like how you measure on the desktop Web.

However, an app environment is very different—you can't always load JavaScript, [and] it's much more difficult to determine whether all the pixels of the ad are present. Mobile app viewability is considerably more difficult.

In May, we saw the possibility that we would have a bunch of vendors come to us and say, "I want to be accredited for viewability in mobile Web because it's easy, but I don't want to be accredited in mobile app because it is going to take me a long time to set up that measurement."

We were thinking that's a bad situation, because that's going to get confusing for the marketplace. So, we didn't want to have a one-or-other choice.

So, we created a metric called a loaded app. It just involves saying, "Did just one pixel load?" We said in the interim guide that it's not a viewable impression, because it's only if one pixel loaded.

Well, it turns out now that time has passed, we have companies that are submitting their tech [to be accredited], and they're all capable of measuring the desktop standard in app, because they've solved the technology problem.

It looks like we're not going to need this "loaded ad" concept.

With mobile video, are you looking at both autoplay and click-to-play formats?
We are, but we are qualitatively looking at them differently. Click-to-play is something that you might have clicked on to play it, but that doesn't mean it's viewable yet—you stay with it for a certain amount of time. Autoplay is different. There is no user interaction with it because it automatically plays. We're analyzing them differently, but we're looking at both times. 

This story first appeared in the Oct. 26 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Having addressed marketers' concerns about desktop viewability (ads that are actually seen by consumers) in 2014, the Media Rating Council is now in the hot seat to provide guidance on mobile advertising.

In May, the MRC made its first statement on mobile viewability, saying that smartphone-size ads need to be measured differently than desktop ads. Five months later, however, marketers are still waiting for an industry standard for chargeable impressions to buy ads against, even with the MRC's promise to address the issue by the end of the year.

"Mobile viewability is huge—people want it done already, so there is a lot of pressure on all sides to move this forward," said George Ivie, CEO and executive director of the MRC. "There's also pressure to do it right. We don't want to set parameters that aren't properly informed by the data and how people use mobile."

In the interim, the MRC is advising brands entering the holiday season to treat mobile viewability the same as desktop, meaning that advertisers only pay when 50 percent of a display ad loads for one second and two seconds for video promos.

That hasn't stopped marketers from experimenting with mobile viewability in the meantime, though.

"It's something you can't avoid thinking about, even if you would like to," said Sarah Baehr, svp, digital director at Carat. "Having the MRC come out with a statement is always important as an industry, but it doesn't mean that conversations aren't happening."

To see just how mobile and desktop viewability stack up, measurement firm Moat crunched data across its clients' sites, which include The New York Times, AOL and Vox using the MRC's interim guidelines. According to Moat, 44 percent of mobile ads served are deemed viewable compared with 52 percent of desktop promos, primarily because smartphone-wielding consumers often scroll faster than websites can load ads. Once someone is on a site, 76 percent of mobile readers choose to scroll down a website versus 63 percent of desktop users who do the same.

That spells bad news for publishers who don't load ads at a lightning-fast speed. Per Moat, the average mobile user starts scrolling on a website 13 seconds after content begins loading. Desktop readers, on the other hand, wait 24 seconds before clicking down a page, which gives ads more time to load.

"If the ad hasn't loaded by the time that you start to scroll, you scroll past the place where the ad eventually loads," explained Jonah Goodhart, CEO and co-founder of Moat. "As a result, the ad is not viewable [because] you scrolled past the slot before it had a chance to load."

And the advertiser is charged for the impression. When readers do see an ad, it stays in view on a mobile screen for an average of 17 seconds compared to nearly 25 seconds on a computer.

The discrepancies may seem small, but agencies say they're substantial enough to potentially blow mobile viewability into a bigger issue than desktop, particularly with the rise in ad blocking.

Just last week during an earnings call, Omnicom CEO John Wren told analysts that viewability is a top priority for the agency, saying that the "time has come to agree [to] industry standards and select third-party verification firms that clients are comfortable with and the providers are comfortable with."

"Our clients are asking pretty consistently on the matter, now that ad blocking has taken a center stage the past couple of months," said Sarah Bachman, vice president of mobile strategy at independent media agency Horizon Media.

Still, not all buyers are concerned about mobile viewability. Brian Nadres, director of programmatic media at The Media Kitchen, said that he's more focused on experimenting with different types of native and social formats—like targeted Instagram posts—instead of worrying about mobile measurement.

"We're still thinking of [what] a mobile ad should look like rather than talking about viewability," Nadres said. "I'm wondering if we're spending too much time talking about viewability and not enough time getting down to the nitty-gritty of, 'was that actually effective?'"

This story first appeared in the Oct. 26 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Almost a year after it started the process of measuring mobile viewability, the Media Rating Council has issued its first set of guidelines, which recommend that marketers treat smartphone and desktop ads the same.

Per the media watchdog, marketers will only be charged after 50 percent of a mobile ad is in view for one second. For video ads, it's two seconds. Those are the same standards that apply to desktop. The draft version of the guidelines are open for public discussion until April 30 when the MRC will take the feedback and create a final set of guidelines for advertisers. (Click here to read the full version of the guidelines.)

The decision to measure both types of ads the same way isn't entirely surprising. In October, MRC CEO and executive director George Ivie told Adweek,"We don't think it's going to be drastically different—if anything, [mobile] might be shorter" when asked about what marketers can expect in measuring the two differently. The guidelines also don't offer specific recommendations for news feed-style ads that run in apps like Facebook and Twitter, where a majority of mobile ads are viewed. 

"As of today, MRC has not concluded that different thresholds are necessary," said the trade organization in a statement, noting that it is still working to understand how content is consumed in news feeds.

The differences between desktop and mobile viewability may be few, but there are some.

Last year, Moat crunched data for Adweek across its clients' sites and found that 44 percent of mobile ads served are deemed viewable compared with 52 percent of desktop promos. And once someone is on a site, 76 percent of mobile readers choose to scroll down a website versus 63 percent of desktop users who do the same.

Whether the mobile guidelines ultimately shape up to be much different from desktop remains to be seen, but it will be intriguing to watch.

A week after issuing its first set of guidelines about mobile viewability, George Ivie, CEO and executive director of the Media Rating Council, explained what the changes mean for marketers during a presentation at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Mobile Marketplace conference today.

Per the MRC's draft (which is open for public feedback until April 30), mobile viewability should be measured the same as desktop viewability. That means that 50 percent of mobile display needs to be in view for one second, and video ads need to be in view for two seconds.

Ivie also shared some stats that the MRC has collected since beginning the process of putting together the guidelines in May 2015. The MRC's data includes more than 1 billion mobile impressions from roughly 12 data sources.

Per Ivie, the average load time for a mobile ad is five seconds. Load time had never been measured before this study by the MRC. Once the ad is loaded, marketers can then transact on viewability stats, he said.

The data also showed that on average, people start interacting with a mobile ad 1.5 seconds after it loads, slightly more than the one second standard for viewability. However, since engagement starts at 1.5 seconds, it can be inferred that the ad was "in-view" slightly earlier—closer to the one-second mark.

Similarly, people start interacting with the average mobile video ad two to three seconds after it loads.

Ivie added that one percent of the measured mobile ads actually had faster engagement rates than 1.5 percent for display or two to three seconds for video ads.

He also talked about the MRC's decision to not include newsfeed-style ads that run in apps like Facebook and Twitter as a part of the guidelines.

"The draft basically says, 'Use the desktop viewability parameters for everything,' but we're continuing to study a newsfeed environment," Ivie said. "We're studying cognition in that environment to figure out whether we need to modify the desktop standard."

He said one of the biggest challenges with newsfeed-style ads is that some claim that as long as the ad appears on a screen it can be counted as viewed, regardless of where it is placed on the page. But, mobile users scroll through newsfeeds much faster than desktop users.

"The truth is, if you pass by that ad so fast, you may not even be able to recognize the content," he said. "Just because it passes you by because you're scrolling so fast doesn't mean that you actually had the opportunity to see that ad."

There are also some interesting differences between mobile web and in-app ads:

• Eighty percent of in-app ads load, and 80 percent of those meet the viewability requirements.
• Twenty percent of in-app ads are served but never load on a page.
• Seventy-four percent of mobile web ads are rendered, with 50 to 60 percent of those ads actually being defined as viewable.

The takeaway for media buyers is differentiating between labeling a mobile ad as loaded or served.

"Moving from served towards rendered for viewability decisions is actually quite significant," Ivie said.

Despite the challenges in measuring mobile ads, Ivie said that the real problem is figuring out how traditional metrics from TV translate to digital.

"Digital actually might be the easy part of this standard—the challenging part of this standard is legacy metrics," he said. "If you look at television right now, we don't measure commercials and trade on that currency, we trade on something which is the average rating for a minute that has commercial content—that can't really stand if you're going to make it apples-to-apples with what's going on with digital."

Viewability, the measurement of how effectively digital ads are actually being seen by humans, has been a buzzy topic the past couple of years. But as more advertising moves to smartphones that rely on consumers also hearing a marketer's message, how many people listen to audio ads? Pandora wants to find out.

First of all, Pandora and digital analytics company Moat have inked a deal to measure viewability within the music-streaming service's app and website that promises advertisers they will only pay for in-view ads that meet the standards of both the Media Rating Council and individual marketers like WPP-owned GroupM, which sets its own, often stricter requirements for publishers and media companies.

Under the MRC's guidelines for both mobile and desktop viewability, advertisers are charged when 50 percent of a display ad is in view for one second and when 50 percent of a video promo is seen for two seconds. Moat is the only tech company accredited by the MRC to measure in-app ads.

The viewability standards apply to all of Pandora's display and mobile inventory bought using a cost-per-impression model. However, it does not cover the company's engagement-based sponsored listening ad product that lets advertisers pay for one hour of ad-free listening.

Lizzie Widhelm, Pandora's svp of ad product strategy, said the company's been testing mobile viewability with clients including GroupM and Volvo over the past 18 months and is part of a bigger plan to measure ads based on other factors like audio and time spent. Starting its viewability efforts with its app was particularly important for Pandora since 91 percent of the company's 85 million monthly unique users listen on smartphones or tablets.

"The ability for real people to see ads is one signal, and a very important signal, in understanding effectiveness," Widhelm said.

Moat's CEO and co-founder Jonah Goodhart said its work with Pandora is one of the first instances in which advertisers will actually transact based on the metric instead of just measuring viewability to gauge how effective a campaign is.

"Historically, you've transacted on ad-served impressions, meaning not the number of impressions that are viewable, but the number of impressions that were theoretically created," Goodhart said. "The shift here is saying, 'We think the world is going to start to transact only on ads that are viewable.'"

He added, "In that sense, the ad server is a little less relevant because we're not really focused on served impressions anymore. It's more focused on the actual billing count and what gets invoiced based on, which is the Moat number."

Chris Record, vp of revenue operations at Pandora, added that audibility—which would measure how long someone listens to one of the publisher's radio-like promos—will likely follow similar standards to those used for viewability.

"It's more conceptual now, and I think the biggest discussion in the market is around audibility against video offerings, but since Pandora is an audio platform, it's likely something that we'll drive innovation around in the future," Record said. "We would really want to dovetail off of the audibility measurement for video and offer something that the market understands or can quickly relate to. We've had discussions and plans with Moat to bring that to market."

For example, a piece of technology or code could be integrated into Pandora's advertising software to determine whether a consumer listens to a commercial in its entirety. It could also check to make sure a device's volume was turned on and whether earbuds were plugged into the headphone jack.

"We're thinking about audibility, time spent and engagement metrics—stuff beyond viewability," Record said.

After getting suspended from the Media Rating Council—which has become digital advertising's de facto measurement watchdog—last month, Google is slowly starting to roll out a new way for publishers that use its DoubleClick for Publishers to measure mobile viewability.

Here is why Google's move was necessary: in April, the MRC issued its first measurement standards for mobile web viewability that treats mobile and desktop viewability the same. Similar to desktop viewability, marketers are charged when 50 percent of a mobile display ad is in view for one second and two seconds for a video ad.

While the standard is the same for how advertisers are charged, the technical methodology that publishers use to measure mobile viewability changed. During an audit by the MRC last month, Google's methodology for measuring mobile viewability did not meet the new requirement, causing the MRC to suspend Google's accreditation.

Starting this quarter, publishers will begin seeing a new "downloaded impression" metric in reports in addition to the "served" metric that they can use to adjust pricing and their businesses, according to a spokeswoman.

To be clear, Google's desktop viewability through DoubleClick and its AdWords business is not affected by the mobile change, and both areas remain accredited by the MRC.

Mobile viewability is suspended for Google because, before April, publishers counted a view as when an ad server sent code to a website to load an advertisement, per the MRC and the Interactive Advertising Bureau's rules. Now, counting an impression requires a bit of extra time—publishers have to wait for the ad server to get a request and then wait until the creative starts downloading on a page before it can be counted.

In explaining the suspension, David Gunzerath, svp and associate director at the MRC said it was, "because of a non-compliance issue related to updated requirements of relevant Impression Measurement Guidelines. We expect that we will be able to reinstate accreditation once these non-compliance issues have been sufficiently addressed."

It may seem like a small, wonky change, but it speaks to the challenges that ad-tech companies and publishers have in keeping up with advertisers who are increasingly demanding stricter guidelines for their digital ads to be measured against. While marketers ask for more, the change in mobile methodology will likely take time for publishers to adjust and prepare for.

As a result, Google and other ad-tech companies have spent the past year building and installing new systems and hiring new talent to accommodate for the change.