Studies have suggested that up to 50% of all money spent on advertising is wasted. The question is: what parts of paid advertising work and what parts fail?
It is thought that around half of all digital display advertising is never seen by users on the web at all. However, Google are looking to bring their special techniques to display advertising by enforcing methods such as the current linking of ad’s to their search algorithm.
“A big focus for us is making digital ads work for brand advertisers,” said Google executive Andrea Faville. “How do you come up with a measurement for brand advertisers that works like clicks and conversion rates do? How do you tell whether a human being has actually seen an ad?”
Image source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/13/google-keyword-advertising-wastes-money-ebay
Google have created a new technology that is said to track an ads ‘veiwability’. This will ideally help advertisers distinguish which of their ad’s are visible and which are being unseen for which ever reason.
This is thought to result in the advertisers who purchase their campaigns over Google’s massive display network, only paying for the ad if the minimum of 50% of that ad can be seen and for no less than a second.
“There is a big need for more transparency online,” said Joshi. “Advertisers are wanting to see more honesty about whether ads are actually being delivered to a site, whether they have been seen, and what content the ad is appearing next to.”- http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/29/google-advertising-viewability-technology
The amount of digital advertising used globally has doubled in the past four years. This has not affected the price however as the amount of advertising space is far from limited. Even large, well known companies such as the Mail Online are only making a small portion of their revenue in display advertising.
Google think that this new technology will change the game entirely and may pull advertisers away from TV. Viewability has always been a huge obstacle for Advertisers. Yes the programme you place your ad around may attract many viewers, but that doesn’t ensure they will watch your advert too. Maybe that’s the time they choose to put the kettle on or go to the toilet? No platform old or new has been able to show or monitor the veiwability of an ad. So it seems like Google has hit the nail on the head? Not everybody thinks so;
“ Rob Horler, chief executive of the northern European operations for media agency Aegis, is suspicious of Google’s motives. “I think it is a bit oversold,” he said. “Google is desperately trying to secure big brand advertisers to switch out of TV and newspapers and want the currency online to be seen as the same.” – http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/29/google-advertising-viewability-technology
It is without question that this new technology from Google is a huge step in the right direction and marks a massive improvement in monitoring ad veiwability, all results and expectations can only be a theory, it’s still can’t prove 100% that the advert has actually been seen.
So what do you think? Is this a new turning table for advertisers or has it always been about clicks and sales?