What Is Ad Viewability & How To Increase The Viewability?
Depending on the screen size and the ad placement on the page, some site visitors may not see some of the ads, even though they might be counted as impressions in the reporting. That is why viewability plays a big role in ad performance and optimization.
What is a viewable impression?
An impression is considered viewable when it appears within a user’s browser window and has the opportunity to be seen. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) the viewable impression must have the following requirements:
- For ads, 50% of the ad’s pixels are visible in the browser window for a continuous 1 second.
- For larger ads (those greater than 242,000 pixels), 30% of the ad’s pixels are visible in the browser window.
- For in-stream video ads, 50% of the ad’s pixels must be visible in the browser window for a continuous 2 seconds.
Publishers who are using Google Ad Manager can use the Active View reporting metrics to track their ad units viewability and optimize them.
How to increase the ad viewability?
There are many factors to consider when optimizing for ad viewability.
Here we discuss a couple of the main factors:
1. Website Design:
Increase your site speed and responsiveness. Lazy loading can also improve viewability, especially on the long form content, since the ad only loads when the user scrolls to the ad section.
You can use Google's PageSpeed Insights tool to measure and analyze your page load and take necessary steps to improve it.
Also prioritizing AMP format over mobile web can increase page speed hence viewability.
2. Ad Placement:
Running ads on more viewable placements is the key. These placements are usually the ones right above the fold or the sticky formats such as Sticky Anchor ad, Interstitial ad and ads running on the Detach video player.
The most viewable ad sizes are the vertical ad units such as 160x600 or 300x600.
Reducing ad latency can also improve viewability. You can reduce latency by removing/reducing the number of passback tags and use Asynchronous ad codes from standard ad servers such as Google Ad Manager.
Need help optimizing ad viewability?
Reach out to your Ad.Plus account manager to see how we can improve your ad viewability and boost your revenue.