Display Ad Viewability Trends, H1 2012 – Q4 2013 [CHART]

Chart - Display Ad Viewability Trends

About 2 in 3 ads placed through direct publishers stayed in-view for at least 1 second during the fourth quarter of 2013, representing continued improvement from 61% in the first half (H1) of 2013, 56% in H2 2012 and 49.9% in H1 2012, according to a new study from Integral Ad Science. With that result, viewability for directly placed ads outperformed networks (50.6%, up from 43% in H1) and exchanges (47.4%, up from 40%) again.

Directly placed ads not only had the highest engagement, they also were deemed to be lowest risk. Unlike a recent report from Solve Media which found rising levels of potentially fraudulent web activity in the US, the Integral study indicates that levels of suspicious traffic were down substantially in Q4 2013, dropping to 13% of traffic across exchanges from 30% a year earlier. Just 2% of impressions placed directly were suspicious, essentially unchanged from H1. Networks, by contrast, were the riskiest, with 15% of traffic deemed suspicious. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.