Viewability could be the next metric adland hangs its hat on. There's a big push in the US to make it happen so that ad effectiveness can be measured across a number of different channels. So where are they at? Well, if an ad is at least 50% loaded for one second, that's a view.
That's according to the IAB's acting CEO and director of regulatory affairs, Samantha Yorke. She was at pains to point out that Australia may not necessarily copy the US definition wholesale. But she told AdNews even that 50%, one second definition was more precise than platforms such as TV, where "who knows who is watching?".
"The debate is much less mature in Australia, but we understand some publishers are being asked about viewability by agencies."
Yorke said that while "some tools purport to measure [viewability], there is no consensus on what it means and what the metrics should be."
But what might be worth copying from the US is its cross industry approach to defining viewability.
That platform could be used to try and establish a reliable way of measuring what had been viewed, by whom, to create something that could be used as a currency, said Yorke. At the moment, she said products from Comscore and Mediamind were producing different results.
"That's what we need to work on, how to audit," said Yorke.
"It's a tricky situation. Publishers say it is an interesting metric, but there has been a resistance to using them as any kind of tradeable metric. So for now, [it's about working out] what does viewability mean? Once we have a consistent [cross-industry] point of view we will talk about it more."
Yorke stressed that she was not stating "upfront that we will move to viewability", but called for other industry bodies, such as the AANA, to make sure it was "on their radar".
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