From Viewable to Authentic Ads® – Holistic KPI for Campaign Effectiveness

Viewable impressions have become the currency for digital media performance. In general, this makes sense – if an ad is viewable, it has a higher value for a brand. However, just because an impression is viewable doesn’t mean that it’s high quality. In fact, optimizing on viewability alone typically leads campaigns to underperform. Why is that?

Media metrics like viewability, fraud protection and brand safety are often measured in silos.  Advertisers are not always given clarity into whether an impression meets all quality criteria. To address this, DoubleVerify created Authentic Ads®.

DV Authentic Ads®

DV is the only company in the market to authenticate the quality of each digital media impression across all key KPIs.

The DV Authentic Ad® is a proprietary, MRC-accredited metric that assures both media quality and media effectiveness. To be counted as Authentic, an impression must satisfy all of the following criteria:

• Fully viewed
• By a human
• In a brand suitable environment
• Within the intended geography

DV is the only company accredited to measure and de-duplicate impression quality in this manner – enabling brands to use DV Authentic Ads® as a definitive measure of quality.

Why does this matter?

A significant number of impressions that may meet one criterion – either viewable, brand safe, fraud free or in geo – do not qualify when analyzed across all criteria. This can have a profound impact on a campaign’s ability to deliver on broader KPIs.

Case in Point: A major telecommunications brand and DV worked together to test the difference in performance when optimizing on Authentic Ads® vs. a single metric of viewable impressions.

When the client optimized using viewability as the only KPI, viewability improved but the conversion rate didn’t increase. Instead, incidents of fraud and brand safety issues increased, and over 50% of some placements were out of geo. Fraudulent impressions and customers out of the client’s geographic reach may have high viewable rates, but they couldn’t convert.

After optimizing on Authentic Ads®, however, the client was able to increase the conversion rate 28%. Focusing on all criteria resulted in impressions that had the best opportunity to perform.

Results like this is why some of the world’s largest brands use the Authentic Ad® as the defining KPI for their campaign effectiveness – should you?