The Asia-Pacific region may be a melting pot of widely different cultures and technological advancements, but this does not mean each market should adopt different ad viewability standards.

Stressing the need for a single standard to define a viewable impression, Google's product specialist for Asia-Pacific publisher solutions and partnerships Genevieve Kelly says the ad tech community must agree to some form of standardisation before it can determine overall ad effectiveness.

In this Q&A with ExchangeWire, she explains that this then will pave the way towards scalability and establish trust among buyers and publishers. She also discusses how mobile has impacted viewability and how the industry can achieve 100% ad viewability.

ExchangeWire: What are some current challenges hindering higher viewability today?

Genevieve Kelly: The main challenges include the use of different technologies, level of programmatic maturity, standards, ad-serving optimisation, and forecasting capabilities. As these behaviours and technologies take time to develop, the majority of our partners are trying to first figure out how to establish viewability benchmarks, what is the right technology solution to power these insights, how to deliver against market needs in the short term, and operationalise for the long term.

How are these different or similar to issues faced in the Asia-Pacific region?

As we've seen in the Americas, the speed of progress naturally starts with agency or marketer-buyer pressure. Similarly, in Asia-Pacific, more developed markets like Australia and Japan are ahead, based on trading thresholds, compared to developing markets in Southeast Asia where the internet is still – relatively speaking – in its early days and, hence, where there is less buyer pressure.

This will change over time as these markets digitise. Growing recognition of the need to be 'viewable by design' is becoming clear as leading publishers experiment with various methods, such as reducing the number of ads on a page, expanding short-form content, and improving latency. These publishers are acutely aware of the risks and opportunities for viewability, but this is not a concern for others in some countries where many have yet to embrace CPM as a cost structure, preferring instead cost-per-time or cost-per-day.

What's causing discrepancies in viewability numbers today? And how should the industry resolve this?

Measuring viewability is hard. It's a technical challenge for everyone in the industry, and we all contribute to discrepancies across vendors. Many in the industry have drawn parallels to the early days of ad serving, where one impression may have multiple different outcomes and all be valid. For example, viewable solutions may claim it is measurable but not viewable, while others say it is both measurable and viewable, or that it isn't even eligible to be measured.

I believe there's a need for standardisation around definitions and methodologies before the industry can focus on progressing towards the exciting stuff, such as viewable time and overall ad effectiveness.

Forecasting and measurement are the biggest bottlenecks for publishers. How does Google resolve this?

The lack of forecasting for the supply side is still a significant challenge and doesn't get as much airtime as it should. If a publisher can't predict whether all of the impressions in their guaranteed deals will be viewable, this naturally presents serious questions around how to manage risk of inventory shortfalls.

At Google, we've been investing heavily in both Active View, our viewability technology, and our DoubleClick for Publishers ad server infrastructure to ensure we're empowering our publishers to build their capabilities around insights and measurement to forecast effectively. This is critical to get it right and will ultimately lay the foundations for transacting on viewable impressions.

What should the industry standards for viewability be today?

Google is a firm believer in the need for a single industry standard; and as such we support the IAB and Media Ratings Council standard as the foundations of defining the viewable impression and developing an agreed trading model. This year, our vice president of product management, Neal Mohan, spoke on this very topic, stressing the need for viewability as a common currency. Standardisation will clear the road to enable marketplaces to scale and deliver value, as well as ensure transparency and trust to both buyers and publishers.

Does the diversity of Asia-Pacific warrant different standards for this region?

We are living in marketplaces of many formats, different ad experiences, and homegrown tech. As an industry, the question we should be adressing is: "What is the right solution for buyers and sellers?" Google firmly believes in the need for a single standard to define a viewable impression. In fact, if you have five 'standards' then you have no standard at all. Secondary engagement metrics such as viewable time and audibility – after all, video is about sight, sound, and motion – can offer a more complete picture of an ad's effectiveness. These secondary metrics, which build on top of the viewable impression, give advertisers and publishers the flexibility they need to measure against individual campaign objectives or geographic needs. However, our industry won't get there if we're still debating the standard itself.

How do mobile devices and platforms affect viewability? Should we expect higher viewability metrics since mobile has a 'captive audience', or does the shorter attention span typically associated with mobile bring the number down?

Latency and suboptimal user experiences impact viewability for mobile. Latency is a key challenge when measuring a viewable impression given the mobile user may grow impatient, close their browser or app, and never actually see the ad. To resolve this, each vendor needs to have a standardised logic and build strong user experiences to deliver fast, viewable, and clean ads across all devices.

The IAB had said 100% viewability isn't attainable, and yet there are players like 33Across and Millennial Media that pledge 100% viewability in their offerings. Why do you think there appears to be a mismatch in expectations?

Today, we are measuring a viewable impression, whether it's 50% in view for one second or two seconds for video. In order to build a healthy ecosystem, this comes back to the foundational work by the IAB and Media Ratings Council to ensure, at country level, we all share the same standards around what is defined as 100% viewable.

There are, of course, players in the market that are moving quickly to expect or pledge 100% viewable impressions, and that is encouraging to see.

What role can programmatic play in pushing up viewability numbers?

Programmatic technology needs to enable seamless viewable transactions, whether these involve direct deals or biddable and open auctions. Google has moved the majority of Adwords to 100% viewable buying on CPM campaigns – CPC are naturally 100% viewable – and for our ad exchange, we pass a rolling seven-day viewability percentage to our buyers in the RTB callout. As seen in other regions, the higher the programmatic demand, with viewability baked into campaigns, as a standard, the quicker the quality will improve on the publisher's side.

What needs to happen or change for viewability to reach 100%?

Shifting industry currencies requires huge change management, therefore, a clearly defined timeframe, governance, and standards at a country level is key to making progress. Google's view is that the industry should only trade on 100% viewable impression goals; and this is, ultimately, what we're building our products to solve across DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and DoubleClick Bid Manager.

On the supply side, publishers need to have the right data and be informed about the different options available to them to future-proof their indirect and direct monetisation models. In a Google research piece on the five factors of viewability, we highlighted suggested methods to build towards 100% viewability; otherwise, publishers risk losing sellable inventory. We also outlined further resources for publishers in our viewability site, including live demos.