AppNexus launches Guaranteed Views, offering 100 per cent viewability at scale

Independent ad tech firm AppNexus has unveiled its latest marketplace product, Guaranteed Views, which sees the company attempt to compete with the digital duopoly of Facebook and Google by offering 100 per cent viewable inventory at scale.

“Until now, when advertisers bought programmatic on the open internet, only about 50 per cent of ads were viewable,” said Tom Shields, chief strategy officer at AppNexus. “Were changing that. We believe this will help reverse the disproportionate flow of advertising dollars going to walled gardens like Google and Facebook.”

Guaranteed Views will enables marketers and agencies to programmatically buy inventory, only paying for ads that measure as 100 per cent viewable. Previously, transacting on 100 per cent viewable inventory was largely only available through Facebook and Googles Display Network, with threshold viewability targeting on the open internet requiring complex and time-consuming work to optimise to viewability based on historical averages.

By targeting the small subset of inventory of historically high viewability, buyers were forced to ignore large amounts of lower-cost inventory on the open internet that could be in-view. AppNexus new solution enables buyers to target the entire internet, using viewability as a given outcome, and optimise their campaigns to other KPIs. Campaigns bought in such a way typically see improvements in cost per view, unique audience reach, click through rate and cost per click.

“Advertisers now see the ability to buy on views as table stakes for effective buying, but the open internet lacked the technology to do this in real time and at scale,” said Viren Tellis, senior director for marketplace management at AppNexus. “Guaranteed View is the first programmatic product of its kind because instead of layering multiple optimisations types, buyers can assume viewability is a given and focus on achieving the performance KPIs advertisers care about.”

The technology relies on view prediction technology to determine impression values, with AppNexus taking on the risk by paying the publisher a CPM on every impression even though buyers only pay for viewed ads. The product is built to work with third party viewability vendors and can either adhere to the IAB standard definition of viewability or custom definitions for advertisers who wish to work to stricter demands.