Integral Ad Science Australia MD James Diamond says the industry is set for a “supply crunch” as he predicts demand is going to exceed supply this year for viewable impressions, putting more focus on exposure time.
Speaking to AdNews about the latest Media Quality Report for H2 2017, Diamond emphasised that as progress continues to be made with viewability, exposure time will “increasingly become what advertisers want.”
“Pressure is going to be on for two reasons, one is a supply crunch – this is the bigger story. As people start to demand viewable impressions, the non-viewable ones become harder for publishers to monetise and there are just less viewable ones around,” Diamond adds.
“That is the thing that I would say others haven't picked up yet. The report shows that it is going in the right direction but whats the future? The future is exposure time.
“This transition to trading on time is really starting to take off and there is going to be a number of advertisers in this market that I am sure this year will start trading on time.”
According to the report, Australia offers high viewability levels compared to many parts of the world, but just under one in 10 impressions have a brand risk.
Brand risk levels increased slightly from H1 and H2 of 2017, from 7.2% to 8.2%.
“It highlights how important it is that advertisers are running both a brand safety solution and viewability solution concurrently. If you're only running viewability you might optimise on non-safe placements,” Diamond says.
“Brands need to implement brand safety technology. A brand's most valuable asset is their brand and they need to protect it. It can't be the agencies problem, it can't be the publishers problem.
“They've got to own that and implement a brand safety solution to block ads when the ad is going to go on content that is not appropriate.”
Viewability for desktop display increased by 8.7% in H2, a trend seen globally but not to this degree.
More than one third of the risky impressions in Australia are exposed near content that is 'violent', something that Diamond says is to be expected when considering the recent spate of crime reporting.
“You can't separate the viewable impressions from the non-brand safe impression. Because what happens is there could be a terrible news event, say for example what happened at YouTube,” he adds.
“A lot of people go to a news website to learn about it so you get this volume which can lead to a flood of viewable impressions but they may not actually be brand safe for some brand right.”
The violence category for desktop display within publisher direct buys increased from 36.1% in H1 to 55.9% in H2 2017.
Diamond believes that publishers need to have the technology to optimise towards the brand safety requirements of different advertisers.
“It's not a matter of saying our page is 'good' or 'not good'. It's about if this page is good for that specific advertiser. We also need to make sure that publishers aren't trying to put ads on pages that will result in an ad being blocked,” he says.
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