For almost a decade, viewability has been the “it” standard. Viewability established a quality baseline with industrywide recognition. If the consumer can’t see an ad, how could it possibly drive results? Unless it’s viewable, an ad is a waste of precious resources.
An impression is viewable if at least 50% of the ad’s pixels are visible to the end user for at least 1 continuous second for static creative or 2 continuous seconds for video, per Media Rating Council (MRC) standards.
As an optimization lever and digital currency, viewability has incentivized a web full of intrusive ad clutter. More than a fifth (21%) of observed ad impressions run on MFA websites that game viewability, according to a January 2023 study from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). MFA websites often resort to high ad density, pop-ups, autoplays, and frequent ad refreshing to generate revenues. But these high-viewability placements are training consumers to ignore the ads they see. And as average global viewability trends upward, consumers are spending less time viewing each ad, according to H2 2022 data from Integral Ad Science (IAS).