Germany: Online ads visible on average for about 13 seconds

Gemius analysed one of the key indicators of the effectiveness of online advertising – viewability; meaning the visibility of an advertisement in the user’s view that is expressed as viewability rate (percentage of displays for which an ad was visible to a user in the web browser) and viewability time (average time the ad remains there). Different advertisement formats such as video, graphic (display) or text were compared. The effectiveness of creative ads displayed on social media (social), other websites (standard), and search engines (search) was described and how long Internet users were engaged.

High display

Just under half of graphic advertisements (47 per cent) were displayed in the user’s view. Display ads lead in terms of viewability time, which is 12.94 seconds for all advertisements in this format. For banners displayed on social media, this indicator increases to 19.10 seconds which, with 84 per cent of advertisements displayed in the user’s view, makes them the most effective of all formats and display areas. On the other websites, 41 per cent of graphical advertisements were displayed in the user’s view and remained there for 11.15 seconds.

Social media texts

On average, 46 per cent of text advertisements were displayed in the user’s view and remained there for 9.7 seconds. Text advertisements shown on social media were the most effective in terms of viewability. Here, over three quarters (76 per cent) of them were in the user’s view and were displayed for 12.52 seconds on average. For text ads displayed on other websites, these indicators were 40 per cent and 10.30 seconds respectively; whereas for ads appearing in search engines – 63 per cent and 7.18 seconds.

Video on top

In terms of viewability (75 per cent) and viewability time (12.7 seconds), online video advertisements in general took the leading position for effectiveness of all the advertising formats. These indicators for video format were even higher in the category of advertisements emitted outside social media – 77 per cent of ads were displayed in the user’s view and remained there for 14.33 seconds. On social media, 68 per cent of advertisements were displayed in the user’s view and remained there for 6.02 seconds.

Gemius uses IAB standards to evaluate viewability, according to which, ads are considered to be visible when 50 per cent of the pixels is located within the user’s view for more than 1 second. For video ads, 50 per cent of the pixels must be located within the user’s view and played for a minimum of 2 seconds.

Gemius analysed data from October 2017 gathered from German Internet users aged 18–90, using desktop and laptop computers.