Despite Tropical Storm Andrea’s downpour last week, ad tech industry folks gathered at the IAB Ad Lab for a breakfast webinar to discuss the hot topic of measurement and viewability. As part of the industry initiative between IAB, 4A’s, ANA driving to make measurement make sense (3MS), these industry leaders presented some of the progress that has been made in this area, and the challenges that still exist.

George Ivie, CEO / Executive Director for the Media Ratings Council (MRC), kicked it off by presenting the current roadmap for viewability both in display and video. With a brief, inspiring speech from the ANA, we then dove into a panel discussion with John Montgomery, COO, GroupM Interaction, Michael Zimbalist, VP, Research and Development, NY Times, and Eric Franchi, Co-founder, Undertone. This group represents every segment of digital advertising – agencies, publishers, and networks – and the discussion focused on what viewability will mean for the industry and for each segment when it comes to currency, quality and ultimately, what it will take to drive the industry forward in order to gain more brand dollars shifted to digital media.this area, and the challenges that still exist.

The discussion did get a bit heated when the buyers and sellers in the room began to debate questions like:

• Will there be higher CPMs for viewable impressions?
• What duration of time should be used when creating a baseline standard for viewable video ads?
• How will publishers adjust their inventory to align with the impending viewable impressions standards?
• Will they lose out on revenue?
• What role does content play?

All of the positions were logical if you applied a “see through their eyes” approach but the one thing everyone agreed upon – viewable impressions will become the norm, a currency on which advertisers will want to buy media that have an opportunity to be viewed. This is the telltale sign that there is nothing that can derail the viewability train at this point. As important is the fact that it will be here before we know it, so don’t get caught off guard and under-prepared. As a key measurement firm in the industry, we feel strongly about transparency of data and reporting, and are working diligently with industry leaders to do our part in driving this initiative forward.

But we also need to consider a critical next step when speaking about viewability, the “opportunity to see” is the simplistic binary measure, but to bring true value the focus must quickly shift to questions around campaign performance:

• How does viewability affect my campaign KPIs?
• What is the impact of viewable impressions as it relates to brand lift metrics?
• How can I incorporate viewability to enhance my attribution model?
• How long must an ad be in view to increase my target audience’s purchase intent?

For a brand, these are THE factors that will play a much larger role in leveraging viewability and determining how many more dollars to allocate to digital.

Smart brand marketers will continue to measure campaign viewability now to gather initial learnings and not just “stay ahead of the curve,” but have an informed voice in shaping the conversation. That’s why we’re putting a lot of effort into our technology solutions to make our data make sense for our advertisers, and make it actionable.With products like Ad VRF™, we layer in viewability data along with audience reach and frequency to help advertisers get more actionable data, driving insights, which help to better optimize their campaigns. And with partnerships like our recent announcement with Compete and Dynamic Logic, we’ve even taken it one step further to combine audience reach/frequency with attitudinal measures to take the “opportunity to see” and move that to the “opportunity to impact.” Through Advance, a holistic media planning tool, you can see the viewable impressions against a target audience and how that campaign helped drive key measures like brand lift or purchase intent. Once a brand understands that let’s say, they need a creative to be in view for 8 seconds, 4+ times for their audience (males 18-34) to increase purchase intent, that brand can then further optimize their campaign against that metric to see real results.

And they can maximize their media spend. It’s not about working harder – just smarter.

The viewability discussion will inflate beyond just viewable vs. unviewable impressions. Those who begin to plan for that now will have a tremendous headstart in planning smarter campaigns.