Viewability is the watchword of the day in marketing. Because marketers want real stats to hang their ad buying hats on, now third party verification is causing some ripples.
In fact, a fair number of brands refuse to buy from publishers — YouTube and Facebook, for instance — that disallow third party tracking.
“The statistics all say advertising on YouTube and Facebook is a smart move for brands,” notes TubeFilter. “After all, Google just reported 91 percent of ads on YouTube are viewable (as compared to only 54 percent across the company’s other web properties). Facebook is on track to earn $3.8 billion from video ads by 2017, with brands like Heineken finding the reach and engagement on the social site to be equal to those of YouTube.”
However, some brands still balk. Take Kellogg and Kraft, for example, refuse to buy without getting their way regarding third party involvement.
”We’ve always been clear with all partners across the digital ecosystem that as a principle we want to measure our investment and if we can’t measure it, it’s hard to justify the investment,” said Aaron Fetters, director of Kellogg’s global insights and solutions center. “Kellogg already confirmed at the Association of National Advertisers Media Leadership Conference in March that its brand was not buying ads from YouTube based on Google’s stance on viewability measurements.”
It’s all about investments, according to Fetters, and justifying ad spend.
“What we desire is a consistent way to measure the investments we place as marketers,” Fetters insisted. “We’re not yet today at a place where we have a consistent set of independent metrics.”
Not all publishers are turning away third party measurement. Currently, Yahoo, AOL, Hulu, Fox, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NBC, ABC, CBS, and Turner all cooperate with brands using viewability rating software from outside the publishers’ networks.
