GroupM’s Viewability Demands Based On TV, Barone Says

GroupM’s Viewability Demands Based On TV, Barone Says

HOLLYWOOD — It is now 12 months and one day since GroupM announced it would only buy online ads that it could be proved would be viewed by human consumers – a “100% viewability” demand that has caused some publishers anxiety.

So, why did the media agency make the switch. In this video interview with Beet.TV, GroupM digital ad ops managing partner Joe Barone explains.

“The GroupM 100% standard basically recognises the fact that the dollars moving out of TV are dollars being spent in an environment where you would anticipate sound, you would anticipate the full screen being viewable,’ he says. “So we created a standard.”

Bundled up in concerns over multiple kinds of ad fraud, a couple of years ago, the industry began worrying about rogue publishers invoking ads in spaces where they were not even being seen by audiences but, nevertheless, were triggering an ad buy.

Since then, the industry has done much to address the problem. Now numerous technology vendors offer software that assigns a viewability rating to ad inventory. And that development prompted GroupM to demand 100% viewability or nothing.

“In the last three years, we’ve come a long with with viewability,” Barone adds. “It’s an amazing testimony to the industry coming together and helping our clients achieve what they want, which is having ads seen by real human beings.”

In a world where wholesale advertising targeting data is now commoditised, Barone says the differentiator is the data brans hold about their own customers.