IAB Australia has established a Viewabilty Taskforce to provide guidance and education around Viewability for the Australian market.

The Taskforce members, who come from a range of digital industry organisations, was set up several months ago to develop a consistent definition and understanding of viewability which will enable publishers, agencies and advertiser to have more informed conversations about what they are buying or selling.

The Taskforce is currently working on a whitepaper which will be released in November and it has flagged its intention to extend its focus beyond viewability and into a broader range of ad effectiveness measures over the coming months.

IAB Australia has been working closely with industry on the topic of viewability, providing industry guidance more than a year ago around the use of MRC accredited vendors and the value of premium placements.   It supports the IAB US viewability measures which were announced in 2014 and have since been refined and extended to cover video, mobile web and mobile in-app.

Viewability, which is about the ‘opportunity to see’ rather than engagement or ad effectiveness, sets the baseline for measuring advertising efficiency. As a result defining and understanding viewability it is essential for all other aspects of campaign success. 

Vijay Solanki, IAB Australia CEO commented: “Thanks to the broad range of participants our Taskforce will provide the industry with a diverse and robust perspective on viewability and associated metrics.”

In late 2015 IAB Australia issued the following guidance to the advertising industry on tracking viewable impressions across digital devices.

Viewability is about the “opportunity to see.” It is not about engagement or ad effectiveness.

• Non-measured impressions do not equal impressions that are not viewable.
• Non-measured impressions do not equal fraudulent impressions.
• Buyer and Seller should agree on a single measurement vendor ahead of time
• If employing viewability measurement it is highly recommended that a MRC accredited vendor is used.”

The basics of the minimum viewability standards recognised across desktop and mobile are;

• Display has 50 per cent of the pixels in view for 1 second
• Display video has 50 per cent of the pixels in view for 2 seconds
• Large format display has 30 per cent of the pixels in view for 1 second