Paid Search and Facebook (Meta) ads have been atop the list of useful tactics for a while. Viewability is of little or no concern with those tactics, and SEM would even have us ignoring ad impressions all together. As you venture into exchange inventory across the web for image and video placements, viewability is something that you should be monitoring. In case you’re reading this and have the question, IAB deems an ad “viewable” if at least 50% of it is in view for at least 1 second. That’s a pretty low bar.

We don’t normally suggest 3rd party verification for viewability, nor brand safety, but there are settings, targeting options, and reports available to monitor and control the quality of inventory coming through your DSP buys. It’s important to understand the different targeting options, where you can target or block inventory known to be (a) above the fold, or (b) below the fold, keeping in mind that a lot of placements haven’t been confirmed one way or the other. Targeting only placements known to be ATF will be expensive and limited in scale, so blocking placements known to be below the fold is a safer place to start. There are different viewability targets and levers from one DSP to the next.

Not all ad impressions are alike, the same way that not all clicks are alike. Once again, proper tracking and clean data are critical. Some of this is also gut feel, where an experienced media buyer can lend insight into the quality of your buy, what options are available to control that quality, and what specific changes would mean to your KPIs and overall performance. Also, don’t completely count placements out just because they’re below the fold, it’s about cost-effectiveness, more than face value.

I used to love the viewability and size of Facebook’s news feed placement, but that inventory is getting smaller while Meta basically forces us to let go of placement-level targeting. It’s been the case for a long time; if your campaigns have a finite goal, your CPA will go up if you start playing with placement targeting, even if you’re using it to target the placements that Meta’s data told you drove the lowest CPA. Illogical, at best, but very real… and frustrating.

We’re always looking for problems to solve, and we’re happy to show you how we do it. Drop us a line here or email us directly at info@whitelabeldigital.co for more info.