Defining viewable impressions for AI native ads
At KOAH, we're leading the next generation of advertising. While we push the boundaries of ad technology, we remain committed to following industry standards and definitions. In this blog post, I'll explain one of these key definitions: viewed impressions.
In 2014, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC) established a standard definition of ad view-ability. The definition of ad viewability is the following:
- Display ads — 50% of an ad must be in view for at least one second
- Video ads — 50% of an ad must be in view for at least 2 seconds
Why does this matter?
Defining what a "viewable impression" is and implementing it properly is critical. If marketers are given misleading impression counts, they may come to inaccurate conclusions about the effectiveness of their ads, leading to misguided buying decisions.
Historically, impressions were primarily a concern for brand advertisers. Google research has shown that longer ad visibility correlates with higher brand awareness. Today, however, impressions are equally crucial for performance advertisers. These marketers depend on impression data to calculate essential metrics like click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates. Without precise impression counts, these metrics lose their reliability, hampering campaign optimization and budget allocation. After all, answering the question "was this ad seen?" is the fundamental first step in optimizing ad performance.
Moving towards a consistent standard for AI native advertising formats
AI native advertising brings new challenges. Currently, there are no IAB or MRC standards that define how to count impressions for generated ads. Several important questions remain unanswered:
- When streaming the text in ads, should a 1-second visibility timer start only after the entire ad has been generated and displayed? Or should it begin as soon as the first token appears?
- What about ads that appear as single sentences within a large LLM response? How should we think about the view-ability threshold when readers may struggle to read text?
At KOAH, we're committed to using the MRC view-ability threshold for our novel GenAI ad formats whenever possible, while also using it as a guiding principle as new measurement standards are defined. We encourage all GenAI advertising platforms to prioritize accurate impression counting to maintain trust and transparency in this emerging industry.