Do You Run Ads in Online Videos?

Then you’re no doubt aware of the rampant fraud in the field, right? The Times’s David Segal has you covered:

Until recently, viewability wasn’t a big part of the conversation about online video ads. But that’s changing. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, an association and sort of nongovernmental referee in this area, has announced that starting at the end of June, a video ad will be considered a viewable impression if 50% of the player containing it can be seen for at least two seconds.

In other words, if you visit a website and scroll down and the top half of a video player is in your view for two seconds, ka-ching. That counts as an impression, even if you didn’t watch the ad.

The coming I.A.B. standard, which sets a baseline for negotiations between buyers and sellers, is a marginal improvement over the current standard, which doesn’t require the ad to be “viewed” at all. But it was as far as the group was going to go.