MoneySuperMarket aims to increase the efficiency of its online media spend by cutting a deal with ad viewability firm Meetrics, as it continues to diversify its multi-million pound digital marketing strategy.

The price comparison site today (13 January, 2014) announced it has appointed Germany-based Meetrics to address concerns over the number of online ads being served to digital screens, but never actually seen by a user.

Meetrics, which claims that up to 30% of online ads are never actually seen by an audience, will help improve the viewability of MoneySuperMarket’s ads bought via programmatic trading channels, using its online dashboard.

The ad tech firm’s Ad Attention Monitor service provides advertisers with data on whether or not their ad is visible, how long it’s seen for, and the number of clickthroughs it has generated. It also claims to be able to identify unintentional clicks on brands’ online ad units.

A release announcing the partnership claims an earlier test phase campaign saw MoneySuperMarket achieve a 37% increase in ROI through its online advertising by focusing on sites with high ad visibility

Darren Bentley, MoneySuperMarket’s head of performance media, says the partnership will help the price comparison site better use its first-party data set, thus increase its investment in programmatic trading, more so than if it had opted to partner with a trading desk.

He says: “We want to ensure our display advertising is as relevant as possible for our target audiences as we look to diversify our digital marketing mix away from a PPC-heavy bias.

“The in-house route we have taken was originally driven by the desire to have complete control and transparency over our automated display buying – we know exactly how much we’re spending across third-party data, media, tech licensing, ad serving etc, which probably wouldn’t be the case had we gone down the more opaque trading desk route.

“The new partnership with Meetrics which will enable us to cut out lower value impressions where the ad isn’t fully seen by the user, is another layer to that transparency, control and performance optimisation.”

MoneySuperMarket works with GroupM’s MediaCom to for most of its media-buying and is preparing to overhaul its online marketing strategy having recently handed design agency Huge London a brief to overhaul its website.

The issue of ad viewability was one of the key themes of the online advertising market in 2013, with UK-based trade body for publishers the AOP devising guidelines for the standardisation of how its members measure viewable impressions early in the year.

The initiative involved the AOP’s Commercial Group lobbying digital heads at leading UK advertising agencies to canvass opinions on viewable impressions and AOP members testing a variety of technology solutions.

The next step is to draw up a plan that will lead to an agreed commercial and technological framework (which will span the different tiers of the industry) so that the publishing and advertising industries can use a standardised measure of viewable impressions, and know that they are talking about a standard unit for ad engagement.