While advertisers may be buoyed by hearing that their digital ads have never been more viewable, according to this year’s Media Quality Report from Integral Ad Science, ad fraud is still on the rise.
Viewability has become a key performance indicator for advertising campaigns across digital environments. As ad buyers continue to weed out false impressions, worldwide viewability rates have soared, rising as much as 15 points in some formats between 2019 and 2022. In the first half of 2022, only mobile web display ads averaged less than 70% viewability worldwide. Video ads in mobile environments boasted viewability rates above 80% during this time period.
Video impressions in the first half of this year continued to accrue higher viewability rates than display — but display experienced the biggest annual improvements and trended higher across environments worldwide.
Worldwide average viewability for display improved 2.6 points in mobile web and 1.9 points in desktop. Display ads were most viewable in mobile apps at 76.9%, with an annual increase of 3.7 points. Desktop display viewability in Canada was flat: 73.4% in 2021, and 73.6% in the first half 2022.
Looking at video, CTV was the most viewable ad format worldwide at 93.2%. Global viewability also rose above the 80% mark for mobile web, with video ads making the most gains in mobile app environments to reach 83.7%. Desktop posted slightly lower average levels, coming in at 76.9%. Canada’s desktop video ad score jumped from 76.0% to 78.1% year over year. Mobile web display went from 68.8% to 69.2%, while mobile video increased from 75.3% last year to 80.3%.
Ad completion rates also proved to be higher for desktop video than mobile web in the first half of this year. Both desktop video and mobile web video increased in completion across all quartiles worldwide, with mobile web improving twice as much in absolute terms compared to desktop. Drop-off rates also saw a decrease in both environments globally, indicating greater rates of full video ad completion.
Global display time-in-view continued to be highest on desktop. Average time-in-view for display campaigns remained on a long-term downward path, also dropping in every environment. However, the downward time-in-view trend for display slowed during the first half of 2022.
Desktop experienced the highest time-in-view, averaging 21.79 seconds worldwide. In Canada, time-in-view for desktop display ads increased slightly year over year from 22.32 seconds to 22.37 seconds. Mobile web display ads showed the shortest time-in-view, averaging 14.57 seconds worldwide. Canada’s time-in-view grew from 14.04 seconds to 14.79 seconds this year.
Despite all of these improvements, the ad fraud problem isn’t going away. In the first half of 2022, invalid traffic (IVT) activity increased almost universally for both optimized and non-optimized-against-ad-fraud rates in most countries, across all formats and environments. Optimized-against-ad-fraud averages rose worldwide between 0.1 and 0.4 points annually, depending on format and environment. Ad fraud rates rose 10 times faster for campaigns that ran without anti-fraud protection (non-optimized), with annual increases ranging from a full 1.0 point jump for desktop video to a 3.8 point increase for desktop display.
