According to an Integral Ad Science study, nearly three-fourths of U.S. publishers surveyed in December 2017 adopt the viewability standard of the Media Rating Council (MRC), which states that display ads must have half of the ad in view for at least one second to be counted as viewable.
While the MRC measurements have become the closest thing the ad industry has to an agreed-upon standard, about three in ten of the brand and agency professionals in the survey said that they use their own viewability standards. For instance, media buying giant GroupM uses a stricter standard than the MRC by requiring that 100% of an ad’s pixels be in view for a full second to be scored as viewable.
Another issue is that vendors have different ways of measuring viewability, so when advertisers and publishers use different measurement companies, discrepancies arise over how many viewable impressions should get billed. Given these complications, it makes sense that nearly 75% of US marketers polled by Integral Ad Science agree that there should be one billable standard in the industry.
Benes, R. (2018, February 26). Half of Marketers Want Stricter Viewability Standards. eMarketer.