63% of rich media ads are viewable, finds DG MediaMind in a new report that uses analyzed data from the month of September 2012 to arrive at its conclusions. Viewable rates ranged from a high of 73% for the travel vertical to a low of 50% for the financial vertical, with CPG (68%) and B2B (67%) among the higher performers and retail (63%) right on the average. Viewability was found to (not surprisingly) impact click-through rates (CTRs): those 63% in-view had a 54.5% higher CTR than the average.
MediaMind’s viewable impression measurement is pending accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC), but tracks impressions at or above the threshold currently proposed by the 3MS (Making Measurement Make Sense) coalition, which currently stands at 50% of an ad’s pixels being in-view for at least one second. AdSafe Media previously found viewability rates for display ads to be below 50% during the first half of 2012.
Looking at the various rich media formats, the MediaMind study reveals that commercial breaks (97%), floating ads (96%), and wallpaper ads (83%) had the highest viewability rates, and were also the most easily recorded. (The study notes that one of the difficulties of assessing viewability pertains to the recordable rate, or the percentage of impressions recorded out of total served, with not all formats being able to be recorded.)
Those formats with high viewability tended to not rely on specific site placement, while those that are more reliant on site design and layout had lower rates – including polite banners (60%) and standard banners (54%).
About the Data: The data is based on an audit of 16.1 billion rich media impressions served worldwide by the DG MediaMind platform during a test period of September 2012.