Facebook wants marketers to rethink viewability standards

Dive Brief:

• Facebook wants marketers to take millennial’s scrolling speed into consideration when debating ad viewability standards, according to Digiday.


• Facebook claims that scroll speed is a better determining factor if an ad is taken in by its users than how long the ad was in view, arguing that millennial users can recall ads even if it is “viewed” for less than three seconds.


• During Ad Week, Facebook rolled out a new way for marketers to engage with audiences through brand awareness optimization. The product enables brands to leverage users who are engaging with a campaign more than they engage with others, and to then target their campaign at similar users. 

Dive Insight:

Viewability standards for ads have been an area of contention between marketers and publishers, especially with Facebook and its home-grown standards, some of which only require ads to be 100% in view for less than a second to count as a view. Facebook’s argument is that it’s about not how long the ad was in view, but how the ad affected scrolling speed that indicates it made an impression on users. The social media behemoth said that particularly for millennials and other younger users, ads viewed for less than three seconds can still be recalled.

“We’ve been studying this phenomenon of time spent on ads and the impact on how well an ad Digiday. 

Facebook’s new brand awareness optimization feature should help marketers better reach audiences that are more likely to engage with a campaign. The feature identifies users who engage with ads longer than they typically do, and then allows those brands to target other users with similar attributes. The key metric here isn’t a set amount of time spent viewing an ad, but instead how long that view compared to that specific user’s baseline scrolling speed. Mudd said teenagers consume content two and half times faster than Facebook users in their 60s.

Recommended Reading

Digiday: Facebook: Fast-scrolling millennials consume ads 2.5 times faster
Marketing Dive: Agency execs: Millennials are changing the rules of marketing

Facebook wants marketers to rethink viewability standards