According to some ugly numbers, as many as 40% of video ads claimed to be watched online are not really viewed by humans at all. Measuring the true “viewability” of videos has, therefore, become one of the industry’s hot topics.
“All the other media don’t spend so much money validating that their ads will show up – we have to,” MediaVest’s digital marketplace MD Ritu Trivedi tells Beet.TV.
“The millions of dollars I could have spent in media now go against all this operational stuff of checking that, yes, my ads showed up. It hurts us an industry – if we were (actually) getting the demo when we bought demographic-based impressions, then we wouldn’t have to validate it.”
Vendors like Vindico offer technologies claiming to measure actual viewed ads for advertisers. Trivedi’s team also uses VisibleMeasures, Nielsen and comScore data.
“You’ve got to put the plumbing in place,” she says. “All boats rise once you start putting the right measurement in place.”
Trivedi was interviewed by Furious Minds CEO Ashley J. Swartz at Beet.TV’s annual executive retreat in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
