According to a report from ad verification company Meetric, the viewability of UK ads has hit its highest level since Q2 2014.

The IAB defines ad viewability as a measurement of whether a display ad has the opportunity to be seen. So, for a desktop standard banner, the minimum threshold for viewability is 50% of the creative asset are being in view for at least one second. For a desktop video, half of the creative asset should be in view for at least for two consecutive seconds.

According to the Meetrics data, the final quarter of 2017 saw the proportion of banner ads meeting this minimum viewability criteria rose from 52% to 56%. This is the first time the proportion has risen for three consecutive quarters.

"Despite previous, albeit small, jumps, we’ve been cautious about being too positive but yet another rise, the joint biggest we’ve seen in consecutive quarters, suggests the battle is being won,” said Philipp von Hilgers, Meetrics’ CEO and co-founder.

“The jump is particularly impressive as in most markets viewability drops in the final quarter due to higher activity – driven by Christmas – which leads to lower quality placements resulting in lower viewability, so the UK has done very well to override this trend.”

Middle of the table

The UK traditionally lags pretty far behind its Western European peers that Meetircs measures. But the newest data puts it ahead of Switzerland (48%), Poland (50%) and Germany (55%).

In terms of the proportion of ads that meet the IAB’s minimum viewability criteria, the best performing country is Austria (67%), followed by Italy (63%), France (62%) and Sweden (61%).

While the IAB minimum criteria says that a 50% of an ad should be viewed for at least one second, the average time a UK ad was in view (but not necessarily viewed) rose by 15% to 24.3 seconds.

- by Colm Hebblethwaite