Online ad viewability in UK remains below 50%
Based on the IAB/PwC Adspend report, released last week, Meetrics reveals that millions in advertising spend is being wasted in the UK. That’s because just 49% of online ads met the IAB/Media Ratings Council recommendations that 50% of an ad be viewable for at least 1 second.
It is the second consecutive quarter in which this has been the case, albeit the third quarter was a slight improvement on the second in which 47% of online ads met the viewability criteria.
The UK remains far behind other European countries. In Austria, viewability is at 69%, in France 60% and in German 59%.
For video ads, viewability is slightly better in the UK at 68%. However, this is based on 50% being viewable for at least 2 seconds.
“To be honest, due to the attention and initiatives focused on addressing viewability, we’d expected a bigger improvement in the UK in the third quarter,” said Anant Joshi, Meetrics’ Director of International Business. “However, it seems that these efforts only just outweigh the impact of programmatic ad delivery and the amount of ad re-loading done by publishers to boost inventory levels. It’s still translating into about £615 million wasted annually on non-viewable banner ads alone.”