As a part of its mission to establish a unified, cross-media video ad measurement standards in digital video advertising worldwide, the Media Rating Council has introduced a new metric for measuring the value of video ads – “duration-weighted viewable impressions.”
What does duration weighting imply in online video advertising?
In short, duration weighting refers to the ratio of the total viewable time to the length of a video ad creative:
DW = total viewable time / video ad length
The concept of duration-weighted viewable impressions hence acts as a “proof of performance” KPI, which basically enables to determine that a video ad was displayed, a viewable video ad impression was recorded, whether an ad was viewed until the end, and if not, by how much, up to a second level.
According to the Media Rating Council guidelines, duration weighting measurement also requires accounting for a viewer’s session cutoff, as well as their inactivity time, if any.
Benefits vs Challenges of Duration Weighting
Ever since the concept of duration weighting was drafted in the MRC’s cross-media video ad measurement standard, it evoked discussions among various industry players, on whether the metric is in fact contributing to the more efficient analysis of video ad effectiveness.
Namely, some experts presume it’s key drawback lies in the fact that it doesn’t factor in other KPIs, like video ad format, audience engagement and affinity, just to name a few.
In reality, a “duration-weighted viewable impression” solely represents a video ad exposure KPI, instead of being an outcome metric, as someone may presume.
This means, duration weighting has, in fact, nothing to do with either video ad quality, or whether viewers actually engaged with the ad.
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Find out more about the specifics of duration weighting and its measurement in the special guide on the AdPlayer.Pro blog.