Nine overhauls ad inventory to improve viewability in effort to maintain trust with marketers
In light of scandals plaguing various digital platforms, Nine has overhauled its advertising inventory across the Nine.com.au websites in a bid to provide marketers and their agencies with greater transparency around viewability and maintain trust in the digital space.
Speaking to Mumbrella, Ben Gunn, Nine director of sales, digital, said the move by Nine was an “important step” in maintaining trust.
“When it comes to viewability the key point is we’re trying to make the industry more transparent for marketers so they don’t lose trust or they can maintain trust with the digital industry. So for us viewability is one of those important steps in maintaining that,” he said.
“It’s hard to escape a week going by where there’s not a platform caught up in some type of scandal.
“That is not great for the industry when that happens. As a major publisher in Australia we have to lead the way and really try and make the industry more accountable and have a standard everyone can accept and measure its success by.”
Gunn was referring to issues around the misreporting of figures by Facebook and statistics revealing more than half of American adults skip ads on Snapchat.
In overhauling its inventory, Nine says it has optimised its websites to load faster. The publisher has also designed new sticky ads in an effort to optimise viewability on Nine.com.au websites.
Nine has partnered with third-party verification vendors Integral Ad Science and Moat while also implementing third-party viewability tracking in the 9Now iOS and Android apps.
Central to the changes revealed by Nine is a commitment to meeting the MRC viewability standards and providing advertisers with the ability to transact on viewable impressions across display with video to be available by the end of the quarter.
The MRC definition of a viewable impression is 50% of the ad’s pixels in view for one continuous second for display, 30% of pixels in view for one continuous second for large-canvas display formats and 50% of pixels in view for two continuous seconds for video.
On meeting the MRC standard, Gunn said: “It’s not a way a business has had to think about things before.
“A lot of work goes on in the background to getting placement up to that standard alone. Do I think that means this is where it should begin and end? Absolutely not. We should all be striving to make all ads as viewable as possible.
“One of the things that can be missed when you start thinking about ‘Is the ad in view?’, is another part of the equation which is: How long is the ad actually being seen for?
“Some of the changes we’re making around our sticky ad formats, where we’re ensuring the ad stays viewable for a number of seconds means we’re actually smashing any MRC standard by three times or greater.”
Gunn admitted there is “no miracle cure for viewability”.
“For us at Nine it’s important to focus on two areas and that’s great content and great products,” he said.
“That’s what engages audiences but also engages advertisers. If we stick to that it’s more about treating the disease, not the symptoms.”
The overhaul sees Nine provide advertisers with the ability to transact on viewable impressions across display.
“It’s a matter of advertisers or agencies requesting to trade on viewability and essentially we ensure we monitor those placements to deliver against the MRC standards and if there is any under-delivery on that then we make that up in a similar fashion as what is outlined by the MRC,” explained Gunn.
So what you are saying Nine is that in order not to be another news article you feel it prudent to take a stance to market. Concerns surrounding this article are:
1) Statements around technology and the impact of the business coming form a Sales leader, let’s face it the tech savvy people in this industry need to be in the press talking about real issues and real solutions – emphasis on real
2) Why haven’t you focused on these elements 2/3 years ago and taken advantage of the ambiguity in market. Other publishers are still way ahead of you. Does it mean that only now have you managed to get the support of the product side of your business.
3) If you are going to stand up in market and put forward a stance or claim then show some numbers to back it up – right now the article is fluff. Provide some supporting evidence or data to show the shift.
4) Ready to trade viewable by end of the quarter? what about the agreement and announcement early last year form GroupM that you would be trading to 100% viewability.
At the end of the day the audience on this platform wants to hear from the real people tackling the real issues and the outcomes of those endeavours.
Please catch up Nine, so much potential so little execution.
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We’re talking a platform of around 6 mil UB”s p/m for their Owned and Operated sites.
Not a big network.
Do we need to worry about them anymore?
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O&O yes, and maybe without their partnership with MSN they are down with the News/yahoo audiences – the fact is however their partnership with MSN makes them the biggest in Aus and as big as Facebook. From what i have seen (not all) but many of the things they are bringing to market are or have been replicated across MSN.. dismissing them in the foreseeable future is irrelevant right now as far as i am concerned.
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MSFT you’d do far better as a stand alone based on scale and depth of data. Feedback I’ve heard is that your platform is incredibly rigid but you were working on these market solutions well before nine, what I do acknowledge that since the the roll out of your new site a couple years back it’s a first choice destination.
When the blind are led by blind, it’s hard to see.
P.S. How big Facebook is audience wise is probably incorrect based on recent events.
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Why so upset Tech Vendor? Did Nine say no to your CV once upon a time? Surely the tech people should focus on doing “real” coding and let the client facing people (aka sales leaders) do the “real” task of speaking to the advertisers that they do business with. Just trying to keep it “real”. 🙂
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Firstly Nine’s representation does give them a huge overall monthly reach (O&O+MSFT), but why has this become a pissing contest on audience size? I get that scale allows you to do more but the article is about the their transparency with marketers/buyers.
The facts are simple, they have put steps in place and are working towards a viewable measured future so marketers can get what they actually paid for.
Pardon my ignorance, but I don’t see any other publisher promising delivery based on a viewability metric in the digital space right now, most are just using it as a fluffer or mediocre ‘insight’ into their inventory, probably because they wouldn’t come close to delivering a standard campaign.
Kudos to Nine, the way they’re utilizing and rolling out these developments should be a lesson to the rest of the industry.
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