12507: Viewpoint 100% Unreadable.

Kraft Director of Data, Content and Media Julie Fleischer whined, “You Wouldn’t Accept 70% Performance Elsewhere, So Why Should We With Viewability?”—and ultimately proved again that her digital ignorance is well above 70 percent. Hell, it might even exceed 100 percent.

Advertisers have always accepted far less than 70 percent performance. For example, commercials have not guaranteed viewership ever since consumers realized a TV break could be a toilet break—plus, digital and cable presented more ways to avoid spots. Direct marketing like junk mail routinely declares victory for .7 percent response rates. Does any magazine or newspaper promise 70 percent readership? Any radio station hawking 70 percent listenership? This topic has been argued before, yet Fleischer continues to call out her computer cluelessness. The woman must stop applying traditional advertising standards to digital marketing.

Here’s a better question—with added relevance for Black History Month: “You wouldn’t accept discriminatory exclusivity from vendors involved in your supplier diversity efforts, so why co-conspire with White advertising agencies where diversity is a dream deferred and denied?”

BTW, the Kraft website—depicted above—is 110 percent not worth viewing.

12379: Google To Tell The Truth.

Advertising Age reported Google—in a demonstration of greater transparency—will start telling advertisers when their video ads are actually being viewed. Yes, but will Google tell advertisers when their video ads are actually worth being viewed? Add some truthfulness to the transparency already.

Google to Tell Brands When Their Video Ads Are Actually Seen

Search Giant Will Report Viewability for Some YouTube Ads Later This Year

By Tim Peterson

Google is getting more transparent with advertisers about whether consumers are actually watching their online video ads.

Google will start telling advertisers and publishers to what extent their digital video ads are being seen, the company announced on Tuesday. Specifically the search giant, which also owns YouTube, will say what percentage of an advertiser’s or publisher’s video ads were at least 50% in view and for at least two seconds in keeping with the Media Ratings Council’s standard.

This viewability reporting will be available to any campaigns served through Google’s DoubleClick ad-technology system, including its ad exchange, but advertisers and publishers will need to use Google’s DoubleClick reporting tools to view the stats.

Video is at the foundation of Google’s efforts to move brand advertisers’ budgets from traditional media like TV to digital channels. And at the foundation of digital is viewability—or at least Google wants to put viewability at the foundation.

Right now online advertising’s foundational metric is whether an ad was served. From there advertisers can see if people saw the ad, clicked on it, watched it, etc.

“Viewability is really table stakes,” said Neal Mohan, VP-video and display advertising at Google.

With display banner ads, Google has already allowed advertisers to pay only for those that are viewed. Asked if it plans to do the same with pre-roll and mid-roll video ads, Mr. Mohan deflected and said that Google plans to roll out more viewability solutions throughout the rest of this year.

As part of that 2015 viewable video ads roll-out, Google plans to extend its viewability reporting to YouTube ads bought on a reserved basis or through its NewFronts package called Google Preferred, which compiled the top 5% of YouTube channels into 14 packages for advertisers to buy.

Later this year Google also expects to start telling advertisers the average amount of time that an ad was viewable on YouTube and whether people are listening to the ad or whether it’s muted or playing in a background tab.

Google also offered a peek at how it’s private video ad exchange business Google Partner Select is doing. Seven months ago, Google announced the program that automates the sale of online video ads through private auctions. Through Partner Select, advertisers can bid on a single publisher’s video inventory and buy ads against full episodes, live sports and news streams and short clips in real time that aren’t available for purchase anywhere else.

Google has added more than 30 TV networks and premium publishers and over 20 advertisers to sell and buy online video ads through its Partner Select program. Companies selling ads through Partner Select include Fox News, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Food Network, Hearst Television, Rolling Stone, Us Weekly and Men’s Fitness. And advertisers buying that private inventory include BMW and Allstate.

Mr. Mohan declined to say how many campaigns have run through Partner Select or what percentage of the average participating publisher’s digital video inventory is sold through the Google-run private exchanges.

In keeping with the viewability theme of Google’s Tuesday news, Google claimed that people on average watch in full 74% of the video ads that are sold through Partner Select.