(VIDEO) The Great Unwatched: Viewability Shifts Kellogg's Video Ad Strategy

For the last year, online video advertisers have been realizing that as many as 40% of video ads played and paid for may not actually be viewed by humans on the other end.

On Sunday, The New York Times ran a big feature that has taken this new idea, the dirty secret of true, "viewability", to a much wider audience.

The article, "The Great Unwatched", quotes Aaron Fetters, director of Kellogg's Insights and Analytics Solutions Center, who partnered with ad tech firm BrightRoll on a 12-month analysis to uncover the viewability of Kellogg's ads.

"Completion rate would have been a success factor in the past," Fetters said at the recent BrightRoll Video Ad summit. "Today, we want to look at: 'Is the video audible and viewable on completion?' You start to see, wow, a publisher I previously would have considered very effective at a high completion rate, maybe they have (only) a 20% audible-visible on completion - I need to optimize out of that."

Appearing alongside Fetters, video ad verification vendor Moat's CEO Jonah Goodhart explained viewability: "When I go to watch a TV episode, I click play ... as a consumer, I go open another tab, I go check my email, I do other stuff until my content comes on - when I do that, my ad is not viewable. This whole rise of bots and nefarious strategies (faking ad views) is something that's real."

You can find more coverage of the BrightRoll summit here. Disclaimer: BrightRoll sponsored Beet.TV's coverage of the event.

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