There are two million sites in the Google Display Network
Google has announced that advertisers using the display network will only be charged if 50 per cent of their ad is visible on the page for one second or longer. Whilst this doesn’t seem that generous an offer, you might be tempted to question how many of the adverts you pay for are never seen by your target audience.
Of course this is nothing new: many, many print magazines were never opened, yet publishers happily quoted circulation figures, and the impact of print adverts was notoriously hard to measure. Google is also playing catchup up with the IAB/3MS standard. The move by Google will drag many sites with them, but there will still be publication websites that will still charge whether or not the user had a chance to see the advert.
This doesn’t need to be a problem. If you have the right tools to measure both the quantity and quality of the traffic to your website – and preferably the contribution made to your marketing goals – then it’s easy to know the value of the advertising you are buying. If you don’t have these tools, perhaps you should give us a call!