Google AdWords has introduced three changes to improve the viewability of adverts on its Google Display Network and make the viewability issue fairer for advertisers. Viewability is a big issue for advertisers, with 56% of display adverts and 46% of video adverts being classed as unviewable due to them being below the fold, on a background tab or scrolled out of view. In such a scenario, advertisers may be paying for impressions for ads that are classed as unviewable, an unfair position that Google has pledged to fix. The first change it took to solve the issue was to automatically change all CPM campaigns into viewable CPM campaigns. This means that advertisers will now only have to pay for impressions if their advert is classed as “viewable”. Ads are classed as viewable if over half of the ad is on the screen for over 1 second for display ads and over 2 seconds for video ads. The second change regards frequency capping. Frequency capping allows advertisers to limit the number of times that one person will be shown their ad. From now on, frequency capping will only count viewable impressions when counting how many times a user has been shown an ad. The third and final change relates to new metrics that have been made available to advertisers. Advertisers can now see the total number of impressions that were viewable, the percentage of impressions that were viewable, and the percentage of viewable ads that were clicked.
