Viewable Impression - not perfect metric for publisher and adverisers

As discussed during class, viewable impression has become widely adapted metric to measure the success of media campaigns. This metric allows the sellers of the Ads to increase their revenue as well as the buyers of ads to increase their ROI. However, as demonstrated in the article. This is not always the case. Here is the excerpt:

“Imagine a publisher charges $5 to serve 1,000 impressions of an advertiser’s campaign, but only 750 of those impressions are “viewable.” Under a viewable impression billing plan, the advertiser would be charged 75 percent of the normal cost for 1,000 impressions (e.g., $3.75 vCPM). Since the remaining unviewed impressions aren’t worth anything to a media buyer, the publisher would earn just 75 percent of what they received before. Alternatively, the publisher could try charging $6.67 for the viewable impressions to maintain their current revenue, but this model wouldn’t lower costs for media buyers and would only further complicate the transaction process.”

Furthermore, ROI didn’t account for the risk for the buyer of the ads. For example, it is not very clear for the buyers to know whether the ads are actually viewed, if the ads are placed towards the bottom of the page and users don’t usually scroll down the page.

I agree with the article that introducing the viewable-impression metric adds both complexity and cost. However, adapting new metric standard request the trust from both sellers and buyers. Such trust will take a long time to establish. Moreover, there is already an eco-system built around the this metrics. Adapting to a new metric will be against will of many who are in this system. I think it will be to refine the metric system. For example, websites should start implementing a new html code that only shows the ads as the user scrolls down the page.

Source: http://www.adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/viewable-impression-boosters-ignore-simple-math/