Key Points

  • Viewability is a primary metric for advertisers to evaluate the value of your inventory as a publisher.
  • Because viewability ratings are used when advertisers are calculating their budgets, viewability directly impacts the dollar amount an advertiser will place on your inventory.
  • Optimizing for viewability is a complicated process that requires advanced technical know-how as well as a bit of patience to reach long-term success. Working with a partner like Playwire is the simplest and safest way to ensure you hit your target.

Flour and bread. Fruit and smoothies. Viewability and ad revenue.

As you begin to get serious about making money, you must start learning about the main ingredients in any solid revenue strategy.

Viewability is as important to earning revenue as flour is to making bread. Without it, you’d have gluten-free bread… and no one really likes gluten-free bread.

In this article, we’ll explain exactly why viewability is important for publishers. Let’s get cooking.

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Ad Viewability Guide

Read The Complete Guide to Ad Viewability For Publishers

Why Viewability is Important for Publishers

Viewability is important for publishers because it’s important to advertisers. 

It’s one of the most important metrics to advertisers because it estimates the likelihood that the ads they place on your site will be viewed.

Advertisers will consider your viewability rating when purchasing ad space from you in two main ways —

  1. When deciding whether or not to bid on your inventory
  2. When deciding how much to bid on your inventory

You’re the chef and your advertisers are your hungry patrons. If they don’t like your food, they won’t continue to purchase it. And they definitely won’t be willing to pay a premium.

Advertisers Won’t Bid on Nonviewable Inventory

Advertisers buy ads for a reason — they want to drive brand awareness and ultimately drive quality traffic to their site. Neither is possible if their ads aren’t visible to their target audience.

For this reason, it’s relatively straightforward as to why every buyer looking at your ad inventory wants to see a high viewability rating.

What is a “high” viewability rating? Typically, we recommend publishers aim for a minimum rating of 60%, but the “gold standard” is 70% or better. However, this viewability standard doesn’t mean an ad was 60% visible — ads are either viewed or they aren’t — but that it was viewed by users approximately 60% of the time.

Imagine you eat breakfast at the same restaurant every day. You order the same meal each morning, but you only enjoy it 50% of the time. For how long will you continue to eat there?

The higher your viewability rating, the higher the likelihood that advertisers will continue to purchase your available ad inventory. For any publisher who wants to develop a sustainable, long-term business strategy, that makes it a pretty important metric to consider.

Advertisers Will Spend More on Highly Viewable Inventory

Yes, your viewability has a direct impact on your revenue. Here’s an example —

Let’s say a clothing brand wants to advertise on your website. If their average profit on an online sale is $100, approximately 10% of ads they place on your site get clicked, and 10% of those clicks result in purchases. In total, that means 1% of ads result in a sale. 1% of $100 is $1 so that advertisers can afford to bid, at most, one dollar on your inventory.

If 0% of the ads on your site are viewable, that means 0% will be clicked. If 0% are clicked…I think you know where we’re going with this.

Here’s the bottom line. If your goals include —

  • Increasing your CPM rates
  • Getting better fill rates

  • And building long-term, profitable relationships with premium advertisers


…then achieving a higher viewability score should be a priority at the top of your list.

More viewable ads = more positive outcomes for buyers.

Positive outcomes for buyers = repeat customers.
Repeat customers = sustainable revenue. 

And sustainable ad revenue = The dream, baby!

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Check out our Complete Ad Viewability Resource Center

How to Increase Viewability

There are a few ways to improve viewability. Here’s a quick summary —

  1. Play with your page layout: Change where ads appear on your page to find the most optimized layout. You can also experiment with different ad units. Generally, the best layout will balance viewability with user experience. To get started on optimizing and customizing your ad page layout, check out our ad layout recommendation engine.
  2. Adjust your ad unit settings: Try lazy loading for different ad units and limit ad calls by adjusting your ad refresh settings.
  3. Get organized: Categorize your most viewable ad inventory and attach a key value. From there, you can set unified pricing rules in Google Ad Manager.
If you would like to learn more about these strategies at length, check out our strategies for improving viewability article.

Hit Your Targets With Playwire

You might be a master chef, but improving your ad viewability rate is a complex process that requires technical knowledge, a skilled support team, and the right set of tools.

Playwire can help. Our team of specialists in addition to our advanced and innovative tech make optimizing viewability a breeze and ensure that your site is set up for success today, tomorrow, and well into that bright future of yours.

If you’re ready to improve your ad viewability rating and unlock more demand than ever before, reach out to us online to get started.

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