Google’s Brad Bender, who is the vice president of Google Display Network’s product management gave a keynote discussion at SMX East, which took place in New York. During the talk he made a very significant announcement about changes that are currently being rolled out into the Google Display Network.
He said, “I’m pleased to announce that GDN is moving to 100% viewable. We’re going to migrate all of the CPMs in the system to viewable CPMs. All advertisers will be able to see viewable metrics so they can make better decisions.”
This is a very significant move on the part of Google, given the fact that Google had said in the past that up to 56% of their online display ads were never actually seen on a screen. These ads were not seen because they were placed low on the page, they were loaded onto a tab that was never seen or any number of other reasons. While Google did take some steps to remove non-seen ads from billing, it wasn’t completely effective. Google claims that last year alone they did not charge for about 70 billion ad impressions because of the issue.
Given this most recent announcement, however, that number will certainly skyrocket. This will save advertisers a massive amount of money since they will no longer be paying for impressions that are never seen.
This is certainly going to be a good thing for those who use the Google Display Network for advertising. They will be able to have confidence that the ads they are paying for are actually seen by real viewers.
It is good to note that this won’t have an impact on things like how many ads are being clicked. It only impacts CPM ads since they are charged based on the fact that they are loaded at all (or were, prior to this change). This very well could cause many more advertisers to move toward CPM exclusive advertisements, assuming other networks follow Google’s lead. CPM is a great way to get your message out there, especially if you can be certain that the ads will actually be seen.
