comScore releases full results of vCE Charter Study

The study found that, in many cases, a large portion of ad impressions are not delivered according to plan, and that the quality of ad delivery can vary greatly based on a variety of factors, including site, placement, creative and targeting strategy. The study evaluated ad delivery based on a several key dimensions, including whether or not the ads were delivered in-view, to the right audience, in the right geography, in brand safe environments and absent of fraud. The complete results are included in a complimentary white paper, which can be downloaded here.

"This is the first study to bring 12 leading marketers together to holistically understand how online advertising is delivered, allowing us to begin to diagnose sources of waste and identify solutions for improving the value that all players in the ecosystem can extract from the digital advertising market," said Linda Abraham, comScore co-founder and CMO. "Until now, neither side of the industry has had a clear picture of ad delivery, resulting in a lack of confidence in digital's ability to deliver on its promise as the most measurable advertising medium. The insights from the charter study represent a critical first step to improving the efficiency, efficacy and ultimately the economics of online advertising for all participants."

Executive summary of key vCE Charter Study findings

The vCE Charter Study includes a variety of detailed findings that shed light on the current state of online ad delivery and its implications for different participants in the online advertising market. Key findings include:

• In-View Rates are Eye-Opening: The study showed that 31% of ads were not in-view, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen. There was also great variation across sites where the campaigns ran, with in-view rates ranging from 7% to 100% on a given site. This variance illustrates that even for major advertisers making premium buys there is a lot of room for improvement.
• Targeting Audiences Beyond Demographics Can be Powerful: Generally, campaigns that had very basic demographic targeting objectives performed well with regard to hitting those targets. For example, those with an objective of reaching people in a particular broad age range did so with 70% of their impressions. Predictably, as additional demographic variables were added to the targeting criteria (e.g. income + gender), accuracy rates of the ad delivery declined. However, the results also showed that 37% of all impressions were delivered to audiences with behavioural profiles that were relevant to the brand (i.e. consumers with demonstrated interests in categories, such as food, auto or sports). One campaign had 67% of its impressions viewed by the target behavioural segment.
• The Content in Which An Ad Runs Can Create Problems for Any Brand: Of the campaigns analysed, 72% had at least some impressions that were delivered adjacent to objectionable content. While this did not translate to a large number of impressions on an absolute basis (141 000 impressions across 980 domains), it is important to note that 92 000 people were exposed to these impressions. This demonstrates that brand safety should be of concern to all advertisers.
• Fraud is the Elephant in the Digital Room: Fraud is an undeniably large and growing problem in digital advertising. The results showed that an average of 0.16% of impressions across all campaigns was delivered to non-human agents from the IAB spiders & bots list. Although this percentage might appear negligible, there are two important considerations to keep in mind. Only the most basic forms of inappropriate delivery were addressed in this study. When additional, more sophisticated types of fraud are considered, the problem will only get larger. Like brand safety, fraud should be an important concern for all advertisers.

• Digital Ad Economics: The Good Guys Aren't Necessarily Winning: The study showed that there was little to no correlation between CPM and value being delivered to the advertiser. For example, ad placements with strong in-view rates are not getting higher CPMs than placements with low in-view rates. Similarly, ads that are doing well at delivering to a primary demographic target are not receiving more value than those that are not. In other words, neither ad visibility nor the quality of the audience reached is currently reflected in the economics of digital advertising.

These findings suggest that measuring all dimensions of ad delivery for every placement in a holistic fashion is critical and that optimising delivery in-flight is a necessary step in the campaign management process. The findings also support the argument that any digital GRP metric must account for validated, not gross impressions. This validated impression measurement must include 'viewable impressions,' based on the very simple notion that if an ad is not seen, it cannot possibly deliver its intended effect. "With 31% of vCE Charter Study impressions not being viewable, it is now abundantly clear just how important in-view measurement is to online campaign validation," said Abraham. "In order for any digital GRP metric to be relevant in the online space and to be cross-media comparable, it must include validated 'viewable impressions' in its calculation. While audience and geographic validation are crucial - and should not be ignored - if a digital campaign rating does not also take into account whether or not the ad had the opportunity to be seen, then the metric fails to deliver a true apples-to-apples comparison to all other media."

About the vCE Charter Study

To understand issues associated with display ad delivery and validation better, 12 leading marketers participated in a US-based charter study, called the vCE Charter Study. The goal of the study was to quantify the incidence of sub-optimal ad delivery across these key dimensions for the advertised brands, and in so doing, frame the relative importance of each for the industry. Key validation dimensions included: in-view, audience delivery, geographic delivery, brand safety, and fraud.

Select study participants: Allstate, Chrysler, Discover, E-Trade, Ford, General Mills, Kellogg's, Kimberly Clark, Kraft, and Sprint
Time Period: December 2011
Total Campaigns: 18
Media Placements: 2975
Site domains: 380 898
Ad impressions: 1.8 billion
Format: All ads were display, delivered via iframes

About validated Campaign Essentials (vCE)

vCE provides an unduplicated accounting of impressions delivered across a variety of dimensions, including whether or not the ad was delivered in-view, in the right geography, in brand safe environments and absent of fraud. In addition, vCE evaluates the demographic and behavioural composition of the campaign audience, enabling the advertiser to assess the degree to which validated impressions reached the desired campaign targets. Using this data, validated Gross Rating Points (vGRPs) and validated Target Rating Points (vTRPs) can be calculated and used to plan and assess the effectiveness of cross-media campaigns.