Recently, Ken Wheaton of Advertising Age wrote an opinion piece on ad viewability. We shared the piece in our meeting this morning, and because “Game of War” ads make me want to pull my hair out, and I suppose more importantly because of viewability, I felt the need to share.
I’m with Ken on this one (aside from the “telling my 15-year-old boy self” part) I am over these ads. This seems to be a question of quantity of views versus clicks. We can all admit that viewability is important. Duh. You have to be seen to get engagement. However, I fully agree with Ken when he says that viewability is the bare minimum that we should be striving for.
Really, we (marketers, advertisers, publishers) should be using targeting and tracking (since, let’s be honest, so much of our data usage is tracked anyways) and tailor to the right audience to provide more applicable ads. This seems obvious – don’t we all know this? Aren’t most people already doing this? Yes, yet we still see “Game of War” ads, well…EVERYWHERE!
Ken makes a good point that he is the target audience for Kate Upton’s milk bath, but if he (as the targeted audience) has seen the ad X number of times and still has not clicked on it, at what point can the ads finally change? At what point can he finally see something else he might actually be interested in? At what point can I, part of the unintended audience, view something else I’m actually interested in?
“In the digital and mobile spaces, what I’d rather see marketers and publishers focusing on is addressing the problems with targeting and tracking. If you’re following me around and scraping my data, you should be serving me better ads.” Ken Wheaton, AdAge
Ultimately, what I believe Ken is trying to express in his article, is that if we have our audience pinned, and we are targeting people who could actually be interested instead of just targeting everyone for quantity of views, then we can focus more on what will get that pinned viewer(ahem, the creative and content – what we are here for and what we love to do) to click and commit to what we are advertising.
As much as I truly believe that every single person reading this has seen a “Game of War” ad, the one Ken talks about is included below for reference.
Note: This is no reflection of the game itself. It could be great and entertaining, and I would have no idea – but that is the point! The annoyance of the ads have actually deterred me from downloading the game. That is definitely not the purpose of advertisements.
If you want to talk about your ad viewability, or what you can do to increase not only your viewability but your engagement and leads, lets talk. Fill out the form below and we will get back to you shortly! If you want to learn more about making the most out of your ads and what to pair with them for better engagement, look out for Meg’s blog next week!
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