If an Advertisement Runs Online and No One Sees It, Is It Still an Ad?

The authors of the paper point out that the discrepancies between the quantities of digital ads served and the corresponding quantities of ads that reached targets were mainly caused by various reasons, including

1)      Deletion of Cookie:

While cookies are around today and are still critical to web-based measurement, cookie based targeting has many limitations. In the first place, cookies are deleted regularly by internet users, and this may lead to huge error in validating accurate measurement of the number of unique visitors to a web site. Furthermore, it can impact upon the accurate delivery and frequency for digital ad campaigns. As noted in the article, problem is that once cookie is deleted, a computer following a web site visit

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2)      Problem of Multiple-user- Machine

The other measurement error can be amplified with the deletion of cookies when same user use multiple devices (i.e. smartphone, home computer, office labtop), and different people using the same computer which can result in more than one person per cookie. Therefore, it is an elusive matter to measure and validate cookie to a specific individuals’ internet utilization.

3)      Behavioral targeting based on cookie registrars

Use of cookie to target digital ads to certain demographic and behavior segments are also exposed to risk in delivering accurate ads info due to targeting errors caused by problems defined in the above (cookie deletion & multiple user machine)

4)      Losing opportunities to be seen

Not all ads in online have opportunities to be seen by viewers/internet users. Thus, not a few ads are delivered to the wrong demographic segment and geography. According to the reading article from Fiosi, Fulgoni and Vollman, the authors point out the fundamental problem of this matter arises from lacking sufficient technology and measurement tool to properly validate delivery across the relevant dimensions. For instance, lack of viewability could occur when a user scrolls down the past ads before the entire message of ads are fully rendered.

It must be also noted that variations in exposures (ie. viewable impressions) affect calculations of ROI and campaign effectiveness. For instance, applying the click through rate as a metric for campaign performance should be abandoned as clickers are not the actual buyers and CTR can distract from optimizations focused on real revenue impact. It is understandable that many advertisers apply cost per action (CPA) metric as this is more reflective of campaign performance, but for better and accurate measurement, focusing on total return on investment by tying ad exposure data back to on-and off line sales is critical.

Source: https://www.econbiz.de/Record/if-an-advertisement-runs-online-and-no-one-sees-it-is-it-still-an-ad-empirical-generalizations-in-digital-advertising-flosi-stephanie/10009778464