Advertising Age reported on research from Google stating 56 percent of digital ads are never seen by humans. This news will undoubtedly further upset the digital dimwits at Kraft and Unilever—even though 56 percent sounds pretty optimistic. Hell, of the 44 percent that allegedly are viewable, probably 99 percent are ignored.
The World Wide Web was not intended to accommodate advertising—at least not in the style that the overwhelming majority of advertisers and advertising agencies are shitting it out. Yet advertisers and agencies continue to seek fresh ways to force interruptive, inane messages upon the online public. Plus, sources such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. are increasingly open to prostituting platforms to position the Web as a profitable and viable advertising vehicle. And let’s not deny how agencies and media companies cheat the systems to inflate impressions and fabricate results. Then when it becomes crystal clear that the efforts are failing and futile, everyone starts whining, seeking to cast blame on all parties except themselves.
John Wanamaker is credited with having said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” With the Internet, the iconic phrase needs a total rewrite and recalculation, pending truthfully accurate data that no one associated with the creation of digital advertising will ever want to compile and share.
56% of Digital Ads Served Are Never Seen, Says Google
Report Comes as Industry Confronts Fraud, Poor Inventory Quality
By Alex Kantrowitz
An incredible 56.1% of ads on the internet are not seen by humans, according to new research released today by Google.
“With the advancement of new technologies we now know that many display ads that are served never actually have the opportunity to be seen by a user,” said Google group product manager Sanaz Ahari in a blog post.
Those ads appear outside the viewable area of a browser window. Once you factor in bots, even fewer ads are seen by the people advertisers are paying to reach.
The report comes at an uneasy time in the digital ad world, when fraud and poor inventory quality are raising doubts about the industry’s ability to deliver on what is sold to advertisers.
The publication of data from Google, the world’s largest ad-tech company, is likely to increase advertiser concerns about the trustworthiness of the digital ad industry supply chain. Google’s finding is based on information collected from its Doubleclick ad server and its display network in October 2014.
Google also found a smaller number of publishers with significantly greater numbers of unviewable ads, which skewed the numbers higher. The average publisher viewability is 50.2%, according to Google.
The report detailed a number of other findings about viewability based on data collected in July 2014. Among them: vertical ad units are the most viewable and placing ads above the fold does not guarantee viewability. Worth noting, Google does offer a viewability product called Active View, which may explain its decision to release the report to the public.
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