UK: comScore introduces innovation to validate online campaign delivery

vCE is designed to enable a comprehensive, holistic view of validated impressions, which can be expressed as 'validated gross rating points', or vGRPs. This new metric reflects measurement of ads that were not only delivered, but that had an opportunity to have an impact on consumers. Validated impressions are also the basis for vCE's campaign audience reports, which include reach and frequency, comprehensive demographics, and behavioural segments, providing measurement of only the people who have received a valid exposure to the advertising campaign.

"With nearly 800 billion display ad impressions delivered in the UK in 2011, it's clear the online ad market today features a surplus of inventory, with many ads delivered on parts of a web page that are never viewed by the user. Ads that aren't seen by the target audience can dilute the impact of campaigns for advertisers and drag down prices for publishers," said Mike Read, SVP and managing director of comScore Europe. "The ability to measure validated impressions, which are delivered in-view to the right target audience, in a brand safe environment, will help increase transparency and accountability for online campaigns. As we help to enhance advertisers' trust in the digital medium to deliver desired results, the flow of marketing expenditure is likely to follow."

vCE Charter Study findings

To understand the quality of ad delivery today better, and to start an informed discussion across markets, comScore conducted a European vCE Charter Study to measure if ads had an opportunity to be seen by the target consumer, in the right geography, next to appropriate 'brand safe' content and absent of fraudulent delivery.

The European charter study included 15 campaigns from advertisers such as Kellogg's, Nivea, P&G, Ralph Lauren and Telefónica (O2) and analysed 640 million impressions, across 213 000 publisher sites without requiring publisher site pixels. Impressions across all delivery methods including iframes were measured.

The following results are the highlights from the first phase of our European study.

• Across the European charter campaigns measured, 67% of ad impressions were classified as being 'in-view.'* The remaining 33% were delivered but never seen by a consumer, a likely result of a consumer scrolling past the ad before it loaded or a consumer never scrolling the ad into view. In-view percentages varied by site and ranged from 64% to 72%.
  
• An average of 7% of ad impressions were delivered outside the desired geography, but individual campaigns ran as high as 27%. In many cases, ads were served in markets where the advertised product is not sold, meaning wasted ad spend and sub-optimal effectiveness results.
  
• 67% of Charter Study campaigns had at least some ads running next to content deemed "not brand safe" by the advertiser, meaning that the content is deemed objectionable by the brand. This type of unsafe delivery has the potential to damage the brand, creating a difficult situation for all members of the digital advertising ecosystem.

The above is part of a global initiative to support industry discussions on validated impressions. The full results from the US-based vCE Charter Study involving online advertising campaigns for 12 premium advertisers, are available for download here: http://www.comscore.com/vce-charter-study.

*In the UK, a standard for 'in-view' hasn't been defined yet. For this charter study the parameters recommended by the American initiative, 'Making Measurement Make Sense', consisting of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the American Association of National Advertisers (4A's) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB.) have been used as a guideline. These parameters say that at least 50% of the advertisement must be viewable for at least 1 second in order to be considered in-view.