Social Media Advertising & Viewability #DigitalSense

As an advertiser I don't want to pay for ads that no one sees, and want a measurable impact on those that do. At the same time I want to be part of a positive online experience, so I don't believe in regularly forcing people to watch. As a result I know that at times our adverts will be served on websites where consumers may choose to scroll past them, perhaps only seeing them for a second. We know consumers do this with traditional media too, though that’s harder to measure.

Facebook & Twitter are just such websites. No consumer would thank advertisers if their newsfeed froze at each sponsored post, and waited until a video finished playing. By their very nature newsfeeds give users control of what they choose to pay attention to, and we understand that is a reality of such platforms. They are though undeniably an increasingly important part of consumers’ lives, and it’s key we find ways to stay relevant in these spaces.

I’ve often seen brands choose to buy Facebook advertising on their 3 second view basis. Impressions which don't meet this threshold are effectively not paid for or included in media reporting. Buying in this way means independently measured viewability scores are consistently over 95%, a far cry from the horror stories that are sometimes reported. Of course in turn there is a price premium per impression, highlighting that viewability percentages on their own, abstracted from costs or business impact, aren’t necessarily meaningful numbers.

Publishers must take responsibility for placing ads in front of genuine human beings. They’re responsible too for ensuring they’re given a decent context, share of screen and a fair chance of being seen. When it comes to the length of that exposure they definitely have input, but user behaviour is a big factor. Advertisers must take responsibility too; if we want people to watch more of our content we have to earn their attention, and highly skipped content often reflects on the creative being used.

One option is not to sell impressions which are deemed non-viewable due to the length of their exposure, though typically what’s left then sells at a slightly higher price. This is effectively what Facebook is doing when offering its 3 second view buy, and moves them towards a VCPM – indeed a ‘cost per thousand viewable impressions’ is a fairer comparison between media than a naked viewability score, and is a more honest benchmark of the value to the advertiser.

That said, impressions on different platforms, under different conditions, for different lengths, with different impacts, and with consumers in different mind sets still aren't really directly comparable. At the risk of getting too technical, pushing for 100% viewability isn’t always the best idea either – it can force you to have a less competitive position in platforms’ auctions, stop you from reaching consumers that algorithms know are less likely to linger, and potentially even give you a higher VCPM than media buys with worse on paper viewability.

When only buying viewable impressions the 'unbilled' impressions are still served, so there will be a considerable quantity of lower quality views that are effectively free. Some of these may be errors & fraud or never on the screen, but most will be real humans who moved on quickly. If you insist on 100% viewability you lose all visibility & understanding of these from your analytics. This is crucial on platforms like Facebook because even these very short impacts can drive shifts in key brand metrics & drive business results. Nielsen research suggests almost half of potential ad recall, nearly as much purchase intent, and a third of brand awareness is driven in those first 3 seconds. Or at least they can be IF the content shown is tailored for such a short exposure.

With this in mind I would often recommend choosing to buy on an impression basis, because even if on paper viewability can be worse there’s evidence to suggest the overall business impact is usually greater. Optimising for viewability on Facebook can have unwanted side effects too, like encouraging the algorithm to chase older, desktop users who scroll slower on the platform. You can end up with fewer total viewable impressions than if you’d just bought from an impression basis.

By my observations it takes most people less than a second to decide whether a post is worthy of their attention. In 3 seconds regular users can be 10 posts further down the feed. Social sites face an extreme viewability challenge because people scroll much faster than when reading say an article, but people scroll fast because they have become adept at taking such information in quickly. Most of us also stroll fast past outdoor advertising, or flick quickly through the ad pages in magazines, but we can still be impacted by those media formats too.

That said, the early days of social video have seen an encouragement for advertisers to make simple adaptations to their TV ads to try and fit the format, in most cases these changes are probably not enough. Animated digital outdoor advertising, or even traditional print, may well be a better starting place for adverts which really need to cut through instantly, and earn any more attention they might then get. Strategically you need to consider where both longer & shorter impacts fit within your mix; there are many things you might struggle to communicate in 2 seconds, but plenty that you can, or that you can reaffirm.

Viewability however is really only one of many factors that add up to an ability for digital media to drive business results. Like many digital measures before it, relentlessly chasing it won't solve all your problems and you can quickly fall into the trap of Goodhart’s Law (‘when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure’). We are applying 3rd party verification so we can also be confident of exactly where are ads are displayed and the quality of those environments. To truly understand what works and where we should invest we layer on wider measures of overall impact & effectiveness including surveys, single source sales tracking and econometric modelling.

Considering a wider range of metrics & factors together, as well as adopting a collaborative approach between different players in the industry, is key to moving digital advertising in a direction where it works for advertisers, for publishers and for consumers equally. 

Frankly, if you're even considering viewability & media reach we've come a long way since the terrible days of fans and engagement.