Around a hundred years after American businessman John Wanamaker, famously said "half my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half," some within the online ad industry think they may have identified the half he was wondering about.
A recent study published by ComScore claimed that 46% of online display advertising is wasted because it is not seen by consumers, due to the fact that the ads are situated on webpages below the cut-off point of a user's screen.
Viewability as the issue is known has sent the online ad community into something of a tailspin. The problem has been likened to selling space on under water billboards; why have marketers been paying for advertising that isn't being seen?
The answer, the industry says (IAB U.S.), is to use a new standard of measurement to confirm viewability. Marketers should only pay for ads that appear above the fold of the page and adhere to a technical standard: 50% of the ad pixels must load for a minimum of 1 second.
Hot on the heels of ComScore's study however, is a piece of consumer eye-tracking research by media tech company Sticky that shows that on average as much as 77% of the online advertising that is visible above the fold and is classed as viewable, may remain unseen.
