Integral Ad Science has released its annual Media Quality Report for H2 2022, where APAC has led the charge with the most significant increase in viewability since 2019.
Time-in-view continued on a long-term downward trend worldwide, and any country-level increases proved to be short-lived. On the other hand, ad fraud appeared stable from a global perspective.
The key highlights from the report are:
1. Viewability and Time-in-View Maintain Opposite Momentum
Annual viewability averages worldwide have risen 9% between 2019 and 2022. The long-term upward trend has pushed average viewability levels to hover between 70% and 75% for several years, with the global average reaching 73.6% in H2 2022.
In APAC: Viewability improved the most of any region in APAC to reach an average of 70.5%.
While viewability has been on the rise, annual time-in-view averages have declined since 2020 when a historical high of 18.40 seconds was registered. Since then, there has been a steady decline in time-in-view, reaching 16.43 seconds in H2 2022, representing an 8.5% long-term reduction between 2019 and 2022.
The descent in average time-in-view is generalised across regions and at the country level. Increases at the country level are typically short-lived, with the downward trend continuing in every device, country, and region.
#2. Ad Fraud Rates Stabilised in 2022
In 2022, the volume of mobile ad campaigns running without anti-fraud strategies (i.e., non-optimised) dropped 25% year-over-year to represent 0.6% of all mobile campaigns monitored by IAS worldwide, down from a 1.0% share in 2019, a 42% long-term volume reduction.
In APAC: Desktop ad fraud rates rose a quarter of a point year-over-year to 2.10% for display, but dropped 1.21 points year-over-year to 1.64% for video impressions.
#3. Quality Path Optimisation (QPO) Uptake on the Rise
QPO layers in a quality assessment based on metrics like viewability, brand safety, and anti-fraud protection to identify channels for purchasing high-quality supply at the most efficient cost. Instead of simply minimising CPM, QPO solutions focus on maximising ROAS.
QPO uptake among ad buyers rose 533% throughout 2022. In addition, the number of ad buyers who have adopted QPO through investment in solutions like IAS’s Total Visibility rose more than 6x throughout 2022. The number of campaigns where ad buyers monitored supply path quality grew even faster, multiplying nine-fold from the beginning to the end of the year.
After analysing over 13 billion impressions across more than 20 million unique supply paths throughout 2022, we found that:
- Optimised supply paths have an average quality rate of around 84% while non-optimised supply paths have a quality rate of only 54%.
- Optimised supply paths have a 43% higher conversion rate than non-optimised.
- Optimised supply paths drive conversions at a 25% lower cost-per-conversion.
Those interested in accessing the full report can do so by downloading it from here.