The more developed a country's market is for "programmatic advertising"—where display and video ads shown on desktop PCs and mobile devices are bought and sold in real time through automated programs—the less likely those ads are to be seen by users. This finding emerged from a survey in the UK, Germany, and France, as reported by Ad Age.
The study defined "viewability" as the percentage of ad impressions where more than half of the ad was visible for at least one second, measuring the number of times ads were actually viewable by users. Comparing the adoption of programmatic advertising across the UK, Germany, and France, the UK saw 45% of display ads traded programmatically in 2014, while Germany and France lagged behind. However, comparing viewability in Q2 of this year, Germany (64%) and France (62%) surpassed the UK (49%). This means the UK, where programmatic advertising is more established, actually had lower viewability.
The core aim of programmatic advertising, which uses sophisticated programming to automatically select target markets, is to display ads to the intended audience at the right time. However, Anant Joshi of IT marketing firm Meetrix points out that "a significant proportion are displayed in places where users don't see them."
While programmatic advertising is projected to account for 70-80% of display ads in the UK by 2018, Joshi emphasizes, "The advantage of programmatic advertising is its cost efficiency, but it faces a serious problem of low viewability." According to Google, only 46% of global ads last year met viewability standards.
Source: Ad Age
Does More Programmatic Buying Equal Less Viewability? The View From Three Countries
