Are your online ads being seen? Comscore pushes for validation

The whitepaper, titled ‘The Economics of Online Advertising’, examined the ways in which the current oversupply of online ad inventory is weighing down the economics of the industry and inhibiting the flow of marketing dollars to the digital medium.

While the paper was published to support Comscore's own product, “validated campaign essentials”, it nevertheless makes several valid points.

According to the paper’s author, Comscore CEO Magid Abraham, the online advertising ecosystem has become highly complex, with a multitude of players and limited transparency as to which ads are visible and where they appear. “Unlike other forms of media, in digital it’s possible (even common) for ads to be served but not appear in front of a consumer,” wrote Abraham in a commentary. “In fact, some served ads never make it into a consumer’s viewport, and are therefore never given the chance to be seen.”

When combined with the zero cost of producing an incremental digital ad, the result is an unlimited supply of ad inventory with a “gaping inability to differentiate high-quality inventory from low- or no-quality inventory”, argues Abraham.

Comscore defines validated impressions as impressions that have an opportunity to be seen and are delivered in the correct geography, among brand-safe content, with non-human traffic removed.

The online measurement firm argues that validated impressions should be included in campaign measurement rather than the standard “served impression” standard. “While it’s understandable that this came to be the currency as there were no better alternatives, the reality is that when each of the players in the ecosystem gets credit for an ad simply being served as opposed to actually being viewable by a consumer, the incentive is to promote quantity over quality,” he wrote.

This results in an average web page cluttered with ads in every corner of the screen, leading to low-quality or non-visible ad impressions. “This leads to weaker campaign performance, providing advertisers less incentive to advertise and ultimately leading to lower CPMs for publishers,” said Abraham.

By instituting a system of validation, publishers benefit because advertising on their site is more effective and more fairly valued, said the report. This will enable them to unearth undervalued inventory and price inventory accordingly.

Agencies too benefit, because they are able to demonstrate better results to the client and will also be able to indicate, with increased clarity, which strategies and executions are contributing to brand lift. Advertisers likewise will have a more accurate picture of online campaign performance and can therefore make better business decisions and allocate spending accordingly.

The whitepaper proposes that, based on a statistical model, brand lift is higher when exposure is assumed based on validated impressions (6.2) versus gross impressions (4). "When using validated impressions rather than served impressions to understand who was actually exposed, publishers and advertisers enjoy a more accurate view of the campaign’s effectiveness," said the report. 

“It’s time for digital to get its fair value as an advertising medium, and that will only happen through improved transparency and better accountability for the ads that are delivered,” concludes Abraham.  “Embracing digital scarcity will necessarily change the supply-and-demand equation for online ads, and with it the fundamental economics of an industry ready to realise its full potential.”