Viewability. Silly made-up word. Important concept.<\/p>\n
“Viewability<\/a>” is the shorthand that ad agencies and ad tech outfits are using to discuss a big problem: Many of the ads that run online aren’t seen.<\/p>\n There are a number of reasons for this. Since\u00a0a lot of online advertising is bought by computers talking to computers on automated bidding platforms<\/a>, there’s no one point of sale. So there’s no nice person to make sure your reel or your flat gets to production with tender loving care. Instead, there are racks of machines plugging your ads into blank spaces appearing on website across the Internet at a speed so fast you can’t see it happen.<\/p>\n Some of those spaces are seen by real people sitting in front of laptops or looking at a phone or tablet. Some are not. Why not? Here are just a few reasons:<\/p>\n – The ad placements are “below the fold” – they appear far down on the web page where readers often don’t go. When this happens, an ad is registered as “seen” but not actually viewed.<\/p>\n – Some ads are seen by computers crawling websites looking for data (sometimes called “spiders<\/a>“). Again, an ad is registered as “seen” because a computer calls it up.<\/p>\n – Outright fraud<\/a>: Ad impressions are dumped outside your target market by unscrupulous networks looking to fill an order. Technology, sadly, does not change human nature.<\/p>\n