What's the Next Step Beyond Viewability?

Many marketers have moved past relying on impressions to measure the success of digital ad campaigns. Ensuring that an ad has the opportunity to be seen is vital, but that's only the start. eMarketer’s Bill Fisher spoke with Harry Harcus, managing director for the UK and pan-regional at programmatic media company Xaxis, about moving beyond the basics of viewability.

Harcus was interviewed as part of eMarketer’s October report, "Beyond Ad Measurement and Metrics: In the UK, Marketer Attention Turns to Engagement."

There's a lack of connection and accountability, and [impressions are] insufficient in helping marketers prove exactly how their advertising helps them build a brand or generate revenue, for instance.

In terms of duration, for display we start with 100% of pixels in-view for 1 second. For premium video, 50% of the video must be played, it must be user-initiated and the sound must be on.

For example, when we did research on premium media vs. exchange media, we saw that viewability, exposure time and dwell time are longer on premium content than nonpremium sites. This converts into longer exposure time for ads, and that leads to brand uplift and positive sentiment recall of those ads.