How Much Ad Viewability is Enough? The Effect of Display Ad Viewability on Advertising Effectiveness

A large share of all online display advertisements (ads) are never seen by a human. For instance, an ad could appear below the page fold, where a user never scrolls. Yet, an ad is essentially ineffective if it is not at least somewhat viewable. Ad viewability - which refers to the pixel percentage-in-view and the exposure duration of an online display ad - has recently garnered great interest among digital advertisers and publishers. However, we know very little about the impact of ad viewability on advertising effectiveness. We work to close this gap by analyzing a large-scale observational data set with more than 350,000 ad impressions similar to the data sets that are typically available to digital advertisers and publishers. This analysis reveals that longer exposure durations (>10 seconds) and 100% visible pixels do not appear to be optimal in generating view-throughs. The highest view-through rates seem to be generated with relatively lower pixel/second-combinations of 50%/1, 50%/5, 75%/1, and 75%/5. However, this analysis does not account for user behavior that may be correlated with or even drive ad viewability and may therefore result in endogeneity issues. Consequently, we manipulated ad viewability in a randomized online experiment for a major European news website, finding the highest ad recognition rates among relatively higher pixel/second-combinations of 75%/10, 100%/5 and 100%/10. Everything below 75\% or 5 seconds performs worse. Yet, we find that it may be sufficient to have either a long exposure duration or high pixel percentage-in-view to reach high advertising effectiveness. Our results provide guidance to advertisers enabling them to establish target viewability rates more appropriately and to publishers who wish to differentiate their viewability products.