Visible Metrics
André Lima, Mindshare, October 2011
Background Visible Metrics is the ability to measure the visible time an ad is displayed on the visible window of the user browser. It doesn’t imply a direct interaction as dwell or interaction time metrics but instead the ability to understand if the ad placement of a certain campaign counted as an impression had the chance to be seen and for how much time, measured in seconds.
Details and Implications
At first this service was provided on top of an ad server as a 3rd party service. The main players were Alenty, RealVu and Mpire’s adXpose, who all claimed at the beginning of 2010 that Visible Metrics would be next frontier for measuring campaign reach efficiency.
The advantages of Visible Metrics could be sub-divided in three areas.
- Audit Metrics – the Visible Metrics allow agencies to control if on a certain network or on a RON campaign the impressions bought were actually delivered on the user browsing screen and counted as a “seen” impression.
- Optimization Metrics – allowing Agencies to have a better understanding on what publisher’s pages consumers and internet users spend higher time.
- Reported KPI Metrics – in this case the exposure time of a certain campaign is related and integrated on a broader perspective, namely how it impacts post-conversion, awareness and on-line/off-line sales.
Based on these three areas, Visible Metrics took two basic distinct approaches. On one side ad servers, first Eyewonder (Ad Visibility) and Adform and more recently Doubleclick and MediaMind, started to offer the Visible Time as an add-on metric. So did some 3rd party reporting tools like Adometry, At a second level, some of the original Visible Time auditors, primarily Alenty are building partnerships with major research panel entities like TNS, Nielsen (Netrankings), MarketingScan and some other local research panel entities. These business partners (Alenty announced the partnership with TNS on July 2011) are providing new demographic behavior data and in some cases relating total Visible Time to off-line sales with demographic and behavior data collected from panelists.
SummaryEven if Visible Time had a “low profile” during 2011, specially due to all the buzz around DSP’s, attribution models and general performance marketing, it is expected to gain a more important role in 2012, particularly with auditing display network buys or extending the off-line TV efficiency metrics procedure (Reach, Time, Frequency (OTS) and Research Panels with Demographic data) to online thus building a single metrics landscape or even benchmark campaigns based on Visible Time.
Mindshare has run several successful tests, most recently with Alenty, and is happy to share learning with anyone interested. Look for more information and plans in the near future.