The Future of Viewable Impression Use Is Now

A few weeks back in an article published on Centro’s blog titled “What do you mean you don’t see my ad?” I wrote this about viewable impressions:

“What if print advertisers only paid newspapers for the ads that were seen by their intended target?  As in, “Hey, our ad on page 5, Section B wasn’t seen by 34.5% of the audience, so we’re only sending you a check for part of the contract.”

Not possible? The stuff of a futuristic Sci-Fi world where devices are implanted in our eyes and monitored by unseen beings?

I hate to break it to you but – brace yourself – something like this is coming soon to the ever-disruptive Internet near you.”

Coming soon? More like coming now.

Just a few weeks after I wrote that piece, comScore announced its validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE) for Video, which measures GRPs, demographics and behavioral profiles of audiences reached by video campaigns, as well as the extent to which video ads were actually viewable by consumers.  (Full disclosure: Centro vouched for this technology and was listed as a partner in comScore’s press release.)

Then last Friday Gannett Co., Inc. and comScore announced that USA Today would be implementing comScore’s vCE and Digital Analytix Monetization tools to optimize inventory and validate that digital ad impressions of desktop web and display ads  are actually seen by an advertiser’s desired target audience.

As if that weren’t enough, Anthony Psacharopoulos, comScore’s senior vice president, told reporters that in addition to USA Today and Forbes, comScore is already in trials with approximately 90 out of the top 100 publishers in the United States.

Don’t be scared – this is a good thing.

On-line touts itself as highly precise and this is a move in that direction. In fact, I predict that initiatives like these will be standard within a year – and before you know it we’ll be at the point at which ads will be served on an “only if viewed” basis.

But again, this is a good thing: As Big Data and the technologies that power viewable impression data evolve, media and clients will have richer data to make faster and better decisions with their limited media dollars.

Measurement is the first step toward better media and, as we at Centro always say, your media should be beautiful and perform. So away we go.