Most digital advertising campaigns are priced on a Cost Per Thousand (CPM) basis where the advertiser pays for the impressions served to the target audiences and consumers. An impression defined as a digital advertisement simply being sent from the ad server and delivered to the device of the consumer. With the on-going evolution of digital advertising, this method has become antiquated and ineffective. There are several reasons why impression based ad campaigns are not ideal.
1. Over serving Of Ad Impressions To Meet Contracted Media Goals
Media companies have a lot of flexibility in the serving of advertising impressions including the frequency of ads served to an individual in a given period of time. The problem is, many media companies contract a specific number of impressions to be delivered in a campaign and often face reach and volume issues, especially with tight audience and geographic targeting parameters. In order to hit contracted goals, impression serving frequency is often set to “unlimited” and then consumers can be sent the same ad hundreds of times, over and over and over. This is obviously not an ideal user experience and can cause negative sentiment for a brand.
2. Viewability And Below The Fold Impressions
Viewability has been an important analytical metric for a number of years. An impression is considered a viewable impression when it has appeared within a user’s browser and had the opportunity to be seen. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) defines a viewable impression as an ad that has 30%-50% of its pixels visible in the browser window for a continuous 1 second. Many times ads are served out to target audiences but are simply not viewable. They can appear “below the fold” or not given enough time to load on the screen. With CPM based ad campaigns, these impressions that are never seen still cost money.
3. Many Impressions Are Actively Blocked From Ad Blockers
Ad block usage is seeing explosive growth globally. Consumers are actively using technology to block the displaying of advertisements on websites and video content. Some publishers attempt to prevent users from viewing content that have ad blockers installed but these methods are continuously circumvented. What this means for advertisers is that ad impressions are served out, and billed for, but may not actually be seen by the desired end users. CPM focused ad campaigns will still count ad impressions as having been served even if the ads themselves are never actually seen.
4. Ad Fraud
Ad fraud remains one of the biggest issues in digital marketing. Fraudsters can create fake publishers, fake web traffic metrics and other techniques to trick ad servers and media companies in to running ad impressions on their networks. These impressions are never seen by real people and instead are purely fraudulently served and purchased ad impressions. In a January 2018 survey of more than 1,100 marketers worldwide conducted by Rakuten Marketing, 27% of the respondents surveyed said that ad fraud will pose one of the greatest threats to the digital marketing industry.
Impression based advertising campaigns are an attractive, scalable and easy to purchase media buy. Ad agencies often build their entire media plans around impression volume. Manicz Media and our team of advertising experts believe that impression based campaigns need to be evaluated by marketers and advertisers as a viable way to measure audience engagement. Utilizing our unique targeting methods and Ad Block Bypass allows us to ensure campaigns are actually effective while preventing any wasted media spend.
Contact us today to see how ad campaigns through Manicz Media drive actual results.