Viewability is not enough. A new quality measurement metric

With Gemius’ new quality measurement metric, online campaigns can be analysed in more detail as it estimates not only the total number of ad impressions, but also the quality of the user’s contact with a given ad. The new index, called eQ Impressions, or the qualitative ad impressions equivalent, includes four primary dimensions: viewability, in-view display time, type and size of and ad, and finally: clutter; so it takes also into account the number of other ads displayed at the same time within the user’s view. With eQ Impressions, it is possible to compare campaigns consisting of different formats and types of ads, including video, display, text and social.

– The ever-expanding online advertising industry needs more accurate and comprehensive tools to analyse the online presence of brands. Today, not only quantitative parameters matter; the qualitative ones become more and more important to advertisers. This is what we started to observe recently: advertisers are putting more emphasis on viewability and they want to pay for actually viewable impressions (vCPM) – explains Marta Sułkiewicz, Chief Sales Officer at Gemius.

– We are all aware that the recent focus on viewability is just the beginning of a whole new journey towards more advanced measurement of the user’s real exposure to an advertising message. This is why, last year at Gemius, we started to work on a new quality measurement metric that takes into account not only the ad’s viewability, but also how long the Internet user is exposed to the ad, the ad’s size and the surrounding clutter. In our study, we also give the information about the ad type: there are differences between display and video ads, and they require entirely different treatment. It all has led us to the creation of the eQ Impressions index, the equivalent of qualitative contact measure from viewing an ad – concludes Sułkiewicz.

eQ Impressions changes the advertising market landscape

The integration of the eQ Impressions metric into the analysis significantly affects the final ad impressions share results. Gemius illustrates this effect with an example of the ranking of industries running banner campaigns in the first quarter of 2018. The analysis has revealed that after the integration of the eQ Impressions index, differences for individual industries can reach five percentage points, and the ranking of industries can change. In both cases (‚regular’ and eQ impressions), the trade industry is ranked first, but when the quality of impressions is taken into account, the industry’s share drops from 36 per cent to 32 per cent. It is the biggest percentage decrease among all industries, although the trade industry has maintained its leading position.

The most significant advancement in the ranking after the application of the eQ Impressions index was recorded for ads in the ‘Leisure time’ industry. With an increase from 8 per cent to 13 per cent, it has secured the second position in the ranking, ahead of adverts in the ‘Finance and Insurance’ and ‘Media, Books, CDandDVD’ segments. The effect of eQ Impressions index can be easily seen also in the share of pharmaceuticals adverts. It dropped from 4 per cent to less than 2 per cent, leaving the industry outside the TOP 10. This has made space for the ‘Personal care and hygiene’ industry ranked on the last position with a share of 2 per cent.

Marta Sułkiewicz explains the drops in the ranking: ‘The trade industry covers the entire ecommerce market, which, very often, does not optimise its campaigns for viewability. This results in a much lower share in quality impressions. For the pharmaceuticals industry, the lower position in the ranking is a consequence of the fact that banner campaigns in this industry are dominated by OTC products ads. The higher position of adverts in the ‘Leisure time’ segment can be explained with good viewability results for gaming campaigns that account for almost 66 per cent of the industry. New game adverts are popular among the Internet users and a long user exposure translates into a higher eQ Impressions value’.

The first eQ Impressions results are available in gemiusAdReal

eQ Impressions has recently been made available to those Gemius’ customers who use the gemiusAdReal study. As of 6 June, all interested clients can now view the first results for display-type ads from PC and laptop screens. The results available in the gemiusAdReal interface cover the period from January 2018.

At the same time, Gemius has started working on a quality measurement metric for video and mobile ads. The company also plans to add a feature for user-controlled modification of eQ Impressions to provide users with more flexibility and enable them to fully customise the metric’s potential to their specific business needs. There are plans to integrate the index into other Gemius solutions including gemiusDirectEffect.