If you’re reading this article, then you’re probably playing a part in the Digital Advertising landscape. Well in 2020, Advertising fuels all Businesses - Digital Ads to be exact! And the most popular form of Digital Ads in the Web space are Display Ads, unfortunately it’s also the most conned one. 

Viewability is the major USP of Display Ads, adding impressions and spreading brand awareness. The viewability metric determines whether the ad had a chance of being seen by the user. IAB defines Ad viewability as - A minimum of 50% of the ad is in view for a minimum of one second.

Frausters have developed various ways to con advertisers on viewability metrics as they begin to generate impressions without making the Ad viewable to the user. In 2016 Advertisers had lost 800 million USD to non-viewable ads. With the numbers increasing each year, in 2019 the loss amounted to a whopping $6 Billion globally. 

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So, what causes this Ads to be non-viewable 🤷

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The most common cases include, Stacking of Ads, Ads being invisible and Ads loading outside the viewport. To be precise:‍

Ad Stacking: It’s a fraud technique where multiple Display Ads are stacked on top of one another in a single ad placement. This  layer of Ads isn’t visible to the user, instead the user gets to view only the top Ad. In this process CPM is calculated for all Ads in the layers and the advertisers are charged for fake Ad impressions. This is also known as View Fraud. 

Invisible Ads: This technique includes the Ads being stuffed in a 1x1 pixel, which are invisible to the user but it’s still counted as an impression & the advertiser is charged.‍

Outside Viewport: A Fraud type where the Ads are rendered outside the viewport, meaning a non-viewable area that’s beyond your browser area.

Other non-viewable causes are when the Ads are viewed by a Bot, instead of a Human - which is usually carried on by bot networks resulting in a ton of false impressions. There are also scenarios where the human is viewing the top half of the website (above the fold) and the Ads are being rendered in the bottom half (below the fold). Ads are also often stuffed into an iframe or are rendered as pop over or pop under, which causes viewability issues whilst generating impressions.

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Doesn't it feel terrible being at the advertising end topping the victims' list? 😒

Few of the top Advertisers have set their own terms on viewability apart from what's being stated by IAB and MRC, but the same can not be said for the rest.

At Botman, we have built specific traps to get you out of this nuisance and back to focusing on your creatives and target audience.

By simply turning on these three traps you can stop all traffic generating from stacked ads, non-clickable ads and ads appearing off-screen.