When running ad campaigns, whether in desktop web, mobile web, or mobile app; ad viewability is one of the top concerns that bubbles up often in a publisher’s mind. Although it can be tracked in your ad server or your ad-tech vendor’s dashboard, you might require a dedicated vendor at a point of time.
So, When Should You Start Looking for an Ad Viewability Vendor?
We all know that no publisher can ever display 100% viewable ads on the website. However, the positive aspect is that viewability can be increased to a certain level by optimizing ads and implementing effective strategies. But, to what extent? When you realize that you are no longer able to enhance your viewability score, then it’s high time to look for a vendor*.
Besides, publishers cannot control and track all variables related to ad viewability as there are external factors (such as ad fraud) that affect the viewability score. And in many cases, they need to prove the buyers that the ad inventories are viewable inventories and by real humans. In such an instance, you need a vendor who is specialized in viewability measurement and can help you with detecting low viewable ads on the website and the reasons behind that.
Not only this, but a vendor can also tell you about your best-performing audience, ad formats, placements, and so on with respect to viewability. Moreover, with the advancement of technologies, you can expect a lot more from the viewability providers in the industry.
*Please note that the viewability vendors may or may not help you with the optimization of ads. However, they can help you with providing insights into viewability and suggestions to improve the score. Ultimately, it’s up to you to learn from the advanced insights and messages to reach intended audiences.
However, choosing the right may be difficult for some publishers. After all, there are hundreds of companies that aren’t MRC-accredited and claim they can help you with your objectives.
Image Source: Google
So, to get you out of the dilemma, we have got a list of top MRC-accredited viewability vendors. The purpose of this article is to aid publishers to evaluate the vendors and find the right partner.
Table of Contents
Top Viewability Vendors For Publishers
Moat
Moat is a well-known vendor amongst top brands including Vox Media, AOL, and Vice. The company provides various tools to measure ad viewability as well as combat ad fraud for both sellers and buyers.
What Stands About Moat:
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Moat offers Analytics tools that provide more than 60 viewability-related metrics such as In-view measurable impressions, Universal interaction %, Attention Quality, Time until hover (in a sec), and so on. The best thing is that all of the metrics are validated by the Media Rating Council.
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Not only does Analytics measure the desktop ad impressions, but it also tracks the mobile web and in-app ad impressions. Besides, via Moat Analytics, you can even know the viewability score of your social media in-feed ads or video ads running on your YouTube channel.
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Moat Heatmaps enables publishers to view the engagement rate of the ads. This helps in understanding if the users are interacting with the ads or not. Also, publishers can download the heatmaps and share them with the advertisers to optimize the ads for better engagement rates.
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Via Moat Pro, publishers can measure video ad viewability, and experiment with “Dry run”. Dry run is a mock tool by Moat that enables publishers and advertisers to test the ads without actually running them on the website.
DoubleVerify
DoubleVerify uses various geometrical methodologies to measure and validate ad viewability on publishers’ sites. The company is an MRC-accredited viewability vendor and also provides various solutions to eliminate ad fraud and make sure that the ads are in a brand-safe environment.
What Stands About DoubleVerify:
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DoubleVerify offers proprietary tools to help publishers evaluate and segment their ad inventories based on the viewability score. This way they can help you sell the ad inventories to premium advertisers and maximize the revenue.
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By using the DoubleVerify Analytics tool, a publisher can track viewability via various metrics such as time-in-view, video player size, and key message exposure.
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It offers a product known as Accelerator that helps publishers to speed up ad creative (display and video) loading time in order to avoid missed impressions. In exchange, it improves the user experience and hence enhances the ad revenue.
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In addition to desktop inventories, DoubleVerify offers viewability solutions for mobile app publishers. The company has partnered with MoPub and is certified for MRAID measurement; that means you can even collect viewability for inventories on your app that don’t leverage Open Measurement SDK.
Integral Ad Science
Integral Ad Science (IAS) is an ad measurement and analytics platform that provides a number of tools and services to verify and optimize the ads on publishers’ websites. In addition to ad viewability, they also offer products and solutions to fight against ad fraud.
What Stands About Integral Ad Science:
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Viewability can be measured across multiple devices and formats i.e., desktop display and video, mobile web, and mobile apps. The company has partnered with FreeWheel to exclusively help the publishers to improve viewability for the video inventories.
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Their Analytics tool gives ad viewability data on different levels – campaign, domain, page, ad placement, advertising partners, creative formats, and so on. The company also helps in validating the ad traffic and provides granular insights to get greater visibility.
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With multiple partners in the chain, there might be times when publishers can find differences in their reports and third-party reports. So, the vendor offers a unified reporting platform that reduces the discrepancies between different partners and publishers.
Comscore
Comscore, which is known as a measurement and analytics company, offers free and self-service solutions for publishers and advertisers to measure ad viewability across the display (desktop and mobile), and video (desktop and mobile).
Image source: Streaming Media
What Stands About Comscore:
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Comscore Validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) enables publishers to generate ad tags and upload them to the ad server. These tags help them to measure the viewability of the ads displayed on the ad creative level. Also, the tool is accredited by the Media Rating Council.
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Comscore Direct is a free self-service platform for publishers to measure the ad. The platform can be leveraged for any digital properties such as a website, mobile apps, video, distributed content, and so on. You can simply paste the code on your property, and validate traffic and user visits across different properties.
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The Analytics dashboard provides in-depth insights into the impression level and ad campaign level. A publisher can track the performance of ads via several metrics such as measurable impressions, viewable impressions, and so on.
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The vendor provides a special feature that allows publishers to identify similar audiences in different domains and find their common points of interest.
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It offers a suite of analytics tools to measure viewability across display, mobile, video, and TV ad inventories. Also, the company provides reach/frequency tools. This helps the publishers to share the demographics information exposed to an ad with their advertisers.
Pixalate
Pixalate is an omnichannel platform that offers various tools and features for brand safety, ad fraud, and viewability. Pixalate’s suite of tools that is known as Media Ratings Terminal enables publishers to build high-quality viewability by providing insights at scale.
What Stands About Pixalate:
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Pixalate provides viewability measurement tools that can work for display, in-app, video, CTV, and OTT. It offers a transparent dashboard where you can track viewability, ad performance, and ad fraud.
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It offers Real-time APIs that enable publishers to gain insights into campaign performance on a daily basis. You can export the report and share it with your team.
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Pixalate’s 1Tag product enables in-app publishers to measure viewability across MRAID and non-MRAID inventories across desktop, mobile apps, mobile web, and OTT. Via 1Tag, a publisher can deploy the same tag across different devices and analyze the viewability and other factors in real-time.
Forensiq by Impact
Forensiq offers a handful of solutions to combat low-viewability impressions, conversions, and ad fraud for publishers and advertisers. The product enables the publishers to be assured that the ads are actually seen by a non-fraudulent audience. The company uses the given formula to calculate the viewability:
What Stands About Forensiq:
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Forensiq Ad Verification Suite provides the publishers with various tools to measure the performance of the ads. This includes measurement of SIVT/GIVT as well as ad viewability.
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The vendor helps in analyzing the traffic quality so that publishers can know the segment that contributes least or maximum to the viewability. This can help you to optimize your viewability accordingly.
Fraudlogix
Fraudlogix provides pixel-based solutions to deliver viewability data on multiple levels such as the domain, app, campaign, advertisers, and placement. Primarily, the Fraudlogix helps in removing ad fraud from the ecosystem. But the company offers Pro and a Lite version for both sellers and buyers to measure and improve ad viewability.
What Stands About Fraudlogix:
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As mentioned above, Fraudlogix offers a freemium model. While the Lite version is free to use and provides viewability insights, publishers can only access limited dashboard reporting features, traffic reporting, and brand safety reporting.
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With the Pro version, a publisher can get in-depth insights into viewability, real-time reporting. Besides, the downloadable/shareable reports are available in the paid version only. In the Lite version, reports cannot be downloaded/shared with other teams.
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Fraudlogix measures viewability for desktop web, mobile web, and video inventories. So, if you’re having in-app inventories, they aren’t suitable for you right now.
As a publisher, it’s your responsibility to understand where you are lagging behind in the terms of ad viewability. After this, if you feel the need for a viewability vendor, then you can go ahead and partner with one of them provided that you fulfill their eligibility criteria.
If you are already working with a third party ad tech partner (SSPs or any other intermediary platform); then you should ask them whether they have support from such measurement companies.
Conclusion
The goal of writing this piece is to help independent publishers know about the top MRC-accredited viewability vendors. And for those who are partnered with managed ad-tech service providers, ensure that they at least work with a valid viewability vendor. Have any other questions related to ad viewability? Ask our AdOps experts via Quick Fix.
