SteelHouse Releases Free Viewability

Citing a rising demand for transparency among advertisers, ad software company SteelHouse today announced Free Viewability for digital ad campaigns, a tool that provides visibility into the performance of ads, enabling advertisers to make more informed ad buys.

"Ad viewability is a key metric that impacts the performance and effectiveness of digital advertising campaigns. Viewability became a big topic in 2015 and 2016 but, despite demand from advertisers to get insight into viewability, getting the data requires time and effort for advertisers to set up, as well as additional cost,” says Mark Douglas, CEO of SteelHouse. "With the growth in advertisers rates from Premium Inventory and Header Bidding, SteelHouse decided that it was important to make viewability metrics availability at no cost. We believe that an advertiser shouldn't have to pay extra to know if their ads are being seen."

With the new solution, advertisers can determine if their ads meet IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and MRC (Media Rating Council) requirements without any additional cost—only ads that meet IAB and MRC standards are considered viewable, and performance metrics only report guaranteed viewable traffic.

"When an ad is shown to a consumer, the ad itself measures where it's being shown and whether the ad was placed, where a consumer can see the ad on initial load, or whether the ad was scrolled into view by the consumer. That data is collected and turned into a viewability percentage that an advertiser can see for each of their ad campaigns, track over time, and make decisions based on,” Douglas explains.

Citing Google, the vendor's website claims that 56 percent of impressions served are never seen. Free Viewability aims to help make improvements in this area, communicating only guaranteed viewable traffic to Google Analytics.

"Improved viewability generally leads to improved performance. An ad impression that isn't seen can never lead to a consumer response. By providing metrics to measure and track viewability, advertisers can use that data in helping them to make decisions and provide assurance that their ads are running with effective publishers and effective placement for the ads," Douglas says.

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