Category Archives: 3PAS

What’s the difference between viewthrough and viewability?

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In case you haven’t noticed, digital marketing performance is more important than ever. With advertiser’s increasing need for accountability and measurement tools evolving to meet that need, there is major and growing interest in associated ad analytics or adverlytics. More specifically, display viewability measurement and attribution are hot topics. Yet, before the explosion in ad viewability technologies and an enthusiastic trade group response to standardize (IAB, MRC), viewthrough remains complicated and mysterious.

Even among experienced digital marketers, agencies and analytics professionals, there is often confusion around these terms with many people using the terms wrong or inter-changeably. They each describe important steps in the digital advertising funnel with viewability an important first step towards measuring exposure and viewthrough gauging post-exposure latent response. It makes a lot of sense to use these tracking methods together.
Viewthrough Defined
Display viewthrough measurement has been around since the late 90s and the advent of agency or
3rd party ad serving (3PAS). That means an advertiser’s digital media agency centrally manages the serving of their display ad campaign across multiple Web sites and/or ad networks. Typical tools used for this purpose include Sizmek, Pointroll, Google DoubleClick and Atlas. The beauty of this approach is having one report that consolidates one or multiple campaign performance metrics across multiple media vendors. The advertiser-centric approach and even allows for performance analysis by placement, ad size or creative treatment across media vendors. Prior to this, agencies had to collect the reports from each media vendor and doing cross-dimension analysis required advanced Excel manipulation. Included in the consolidated report was usually impressions, clicks, media cost a calculated click rate and effective CPM (cost per thousand). Potentially average frequency of ad delivery could also be reported.

How Viewthrough Works
As a more advanced option, the ad server could generate a special beacon tag which could be coded on an important digital event on the client’s Web site, e.g. a visit to the home page, playing a game, initiating a particular download and most obviously the rendering of an order thank you page. The latter being a revenue-generating conversion. The way it works is simple enough: the ad server site code that is placed is page-specific and named in a certain way with a certain ID. When that beacon tag fires, the ad server increments the count for that specific ad. The ad server uses clicker cookies to distinguish between clickthrough conversions and viewthrough conversions by the presence of a click cookie that is served to the browser if they click an ad. Generally, a viewthrough can be simply a visit to the target site or it can be an actual ecommerce conversion.
Fig 1. Viewthrough Process
In practice this meant that digital advertisers were no longer limited to the more direct-response oriented clickthrough rate for measuring display campaign performance. With viewthrough they could also analyze the passive impact of display which is more difficult to measure since it is not immediate and is harder to measure than clickthroughs which use appended query string parameters in the landing page clickthrough URL. That said, viewthrough measurement from the ad server is not enough as unscrupulous ad networks learned to do what is called cookie-stuffing to take advantage of affiliate advertising systems.
Site Analytics Technology Matters
Going beyond simplistic, ad server viewthrough measurement is not easy for digital marketers and technology choices matter. The complexities of generating and managing ad server site tags has also made ubiquitous measurement operationally difficult. What’s more ad server counting of viewthrough was an afterthought. The solution to better viewthrough measurement is ingesting ad server data into the site analytics system where site taxonomy, visitor uniqueness, multiple marketing channels and event level tracking infrastructure already exists. Another option are the better algorithmic attribution systems; a couple even integrate display viewability into their solution (ideal).
The reality is that there is are a few site analytics platforms that integrate with the ad servers in the market today. All are not created equal, not independent of media and there are significant differences in the methodologies. The integrations can be complex but well worth it for advertisers spending more than $10MM per year in display media. However, the learnings are significant when it comes to understanding customer’s digital path to the target Web sites and the latent effects of display ads (banner/video/mobile). 
Last, a word of caution: the best way to really understand display media from a viewthrough standpoint is through periodic incrementality analysis, i.e. test and control.
Viewability Defined
Display viewability is a newer capability for digital marketers that has really caught on over the last five years. Essentially, display viewability leverages Web technology that can determine how much of an ad is “in view” of the user’s browser window and for how long. While there is some additional complexity involved, simply put this offers a way for digital advertisers to really understand the quality of the ad inventory that they are buying from Web publishers and ad networks.
Fig 2. Viewability Process
Industry Reaction to Measuring Ad Viewability
Not surprisingly, ad viewability has met with resistance from publishers and even media agencies though it is of obvious interest to advertisers. By better managing viewability, advertisers can ensure they maximize the value of their display spend in terms of both raising awareness and driving a measureable response (clickthrough, viewthrough, engagement, conversions). Unlike viewthrough which languished for years as somewhat of a stepchild metric, The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Ratings Council (MRC) stepped in early on viewability to create some early standards: 50% or more of an ad for at least 1 second. Advertisers can certainly raise the bar here but there is at least a baseline.
Ad viewability is fairly easy to implement on a display campaign but can often be challenging to operationally integrate into media performance reporting. As a best practice, having an independent analytics team pilot test and benchmark current performance will help gauge how much upside potential there might be.
Rising Tide Lifts All Ships
It stands to reason that you cannot have a clickthrough without an ad first being viewable. If an advertiser were to increase their ad viewability rate from 50% to 75% that would likely mean the number of clicks and therefore clickthrough rate should increase. Similarly, you cannot have legitimate viewthrough without an ad first being viewable. Increasing ad viewability rates should also benefit viewthrough rates as well.

  • Viewthrough – It’s all about response measurement. Advertisers ultimately should be very keen on measuring viewthrough from display media if they are interested in Web site engagement and even more so if an online conversion is possible (offline measurement is also possible).
  • Viewability– Think front-end of the advertising process, i.e. the inputs. The focus is on doing what branding has always sought to do through media campaigns: create an impression, influence behavior or change preferences.

As you can see, while they are certainly related viewthrough and viewability are very different. Measuring and optimizing viewability should be a self-evident way to improve those front-end metrics that will likely also boosts downstream ones. Viewability and viewthrough can and should work together.

Buying a Stairway to Attribution – Part 2 (Getting Integrated)

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In the last post, Buying a Viewthrough Stairway to Attribution – Part 1, we looked at the first two steps in viewthrough measurement. These two are easy enough and come from an ad network partner or your agency’s display ad server.


Proceed to Step #3 brings together the two very different worlds of display ad servers and site-side analytics systems. At a high-level, these systems notoriously have measurement discrepancies – ad servers are typically server-side while modern site analytics solutions are all or in-part JavaScript based. In addition, there are different filters being used to exclude internal and robotic traffic.



Nonetheless, an integrated solution can be a game-changer for most digital advertising clients. Most are still struggling to understand the latent (non-click) but now quantifiable brand influence of display media on subsequent destination site behavior.

  1. Site Analytics integrated with Third-Party Ad Servers (3PAS)

    • Upside: A really powerful way to advance viewthrough measurement capabilities is to leverage the data contained in the digital media agency’s ad server. From that standpoint, the digital marketer is combining the best of both worlds: a) digital media agency-of-record’s ad server platform and b) existing in-house site analytics system-of-record. There are two distinct approaches, either taking the analytics platform and bringing it up the funnel into the ad delivery through ad tagging or make the site analytics platform talk to the ad server via integration. IBM Coremetrics takes the former approach and Omniture Genesis takes the latter. This approach is potentially very powerful because it considers all digital channels, both paid and unpaid in one place. For this reason, attribution can be considerate of all the digital channels being employed. Site analytics technologies that have provided related information to the VMC are included in the Viewthrough Capabilities Scorecard. If yours is not included get in touch.
    • Downside: Like ad networks/media vendors, ad servers can only measure what they themselves have tracked via the ads that have been delivered and their advertiser site-side tracking tags (DFA Floodlights and Atlas Universal Tags). While this avoids the single media vendor problem (now all display media being measured in one platform), its efficacy is then limited to tag proliferation on the destination site; this usually means only high-value tasks and conversions get tracked. Using a TMS (tag management platform) such as BrightTag can make this part much easier opening up deep-linked visitation and broader engagement activity. Difficulty on this approach can be high as either the integration must be configured upfront (Adobe Genesis) or there could be ongoing ad ops implications (CoreMetrics). Be careful what you wish for here as as the multiple fractional attribution methods enabled such as last-click, last-touch,now operational beget questions that have organizational/political implications. Like Steps 1 and 2, most of the technologies in Step 3 do not yet have ad-viewability solutions integrated at this time.

In Buying a Viewthrough Stairway to Attribution – Part 3, we’ll address the above point about fractional attribution. We’ll look at taking this question away altogether from human marketers and allowing the data to speak for itself through heavy datamining and algorithmic attribution modeling.

Buying a Stairway to Viewthrough – Part 1 (The Basics)

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With the growing interest in defining viewthrough by multiple participants from across the ecosystem, many digital marketers are still scratching their head. This is the first of a short series of posts to provide an analytics-first view of viewthrough measurement and how you can get started.

The Stairway to Viewthrough Attribution
One of the great things about the Viewthrough Measurement Consortium (VMC) is the decentralized aspect, which enables the collection of diverse points of view. An outstanding point was made recently, which led to the thinking about the actionability of viewthrough tools and attribution approaches. That led to the conception of a viewthrough measurement progression chart, i.e. a kind of specialized Analytics Maturity Model. For digital marketers seeking to understand the complex analytics around post-impression measurement, it is more of a stairway to viewthrough attribution…Hopefully, that doesn’t offend Led Zeppelin fans too much.

Delving deeper, there are five distinct steps in the Viewthrough Stairway. What’s more, as tool capability increases so does technical complexity – it looks like this:

Here to Get Started
The first place to look is to your digital media vendors and digital media agency. The good news here is that the cost is low and the benefit potentially rich without having to do too much.

  1. Ad Networks/DSPs/Publishers
    • Upside: The simplest way to get viewthrough measurement is to leverage the display advertising and site tagging infrastructure of a media vendor, Demand Side Platform or ad network. Many of these tools have a nascent viewthrough capability but may or may not report it out explicitly. Tracking it will always require the advertiser to place tags on one or more pages on the destination site(s). Companies that have provided information to the VMC are included in the Viewthrough Capabilities Scorecard. If your ad network or media property is not included get in touch.
    • Downside: The technologies can only measure what they themselves have tracked via ad delivery and through their  tracking tags placed on the advertiser site. If the display strategy relies on just one company then this can work and still be comprehensive; it means that viewthrough is only happening across that one ad network/DSP/publisher, which is not realistic for larger enterprises. Most of these companies tend to skirt viewthrough discussion unless the client or agency brings it up. Ad viewability is not a big part of the discussion yet but promises to be. Last, this approach usually relies on 3rd party cookies, the efficacy of which for measurement can degrade over long periods of time with some prone to deliberate blocking.
  2. Third-Party Ad Server (3PAS)
    • Upside: The next best way is to leverage your digital media agency-of-record’s ad server platform. There are a few major ones to choose from: DFA/DART, Atlas, Pointroll, MediaMind and Mediaplex are the most prevalent. There are behavioral data sharing issues that arise with Google(DFA/DART) and potentially Facebook (Atlas). In this scenario the ad server reporting system is used. Like ad networks/DSPs/publisher ad sevrers, this requires one or more page tracking tags to be placed on the advertiser’s Web site. Ad servers that have provided information to the VMC are included in the Viewthrough Capabilities Scorecard. If yours is not included get in touch.
    • Downside: Like media vendors, ad servers can only measure what they themselves have tracked via ads delivered and advertiser site tracking tags, e.g. DFA Floodlights and Atlas Universal Tags. While this addresses the single media vendor problem (now all your media can be measured), its efficacy is then limited to tag proliferation and this usually means only high-value tasks and conversions get tracked. Most ad servers do not have a native ad viewability measurement capability yet, although DFA is close via the Google Ad Network. A significant issue for the raw 3PAS approach is that most viewthrough report ignores other digital channels Again, DFA has some ability to include Paid Search if DART Analytis is being used but still misses organix search, email, social, affiliates and other sources of traffic. Also, ad servers were just not built for page and user centric reporting like a site analytics tool is so de-duping is a big problem. Same issues with browser cookies.

     

In the next post, we’ll ascend to the next step in the Viewthrough Staircase. We’ll take a closer look at a more advanced approach that integrates data across agencies’ third-party ad server and advertisers’ site analytics platform for maximum convenience.