On Monday, Nov 17th COMSCORE announced the viability of view-through metrics as a key performance indicator for Web advertising.

According to their announcement:

“The comScore norms data provide compelling empirical support for the belief that there is a quantifiable view-thru impact of online ad exposures on brand value and sales.”

View Through metrics – what does it mean and how does it work?

View-throughs, or post-impressions as they are also known, generally refer to online conversions that result from a user seeing an ad online but not clicking on it at that moment.

View-throughs work by leaving a cookie on a visitor’s computer when they are exposed to a banner. Then, when that visitor goes to the site that was advertised on the banner, the system looks up the cookie and can identify the site on which the banner was seen. This way the conversion (if there is one) could be accredited to the relevant banner.

Why are view-throughs important?

According to the ComScore tests there was a difference between the behaviour of visitors that were exposed to an online ad campaign and those that weren’t:

“For the studies in which both retailers’ online and offline sales were analyzed, for periods ranging from two weeks to three months after the initial exposure to an online display ad, the incremental online sales lift was 27 percent and offline sales lift was 17 percent.

Online ad exposures also yield a lift in various important online behaviors, such as brand site visitation and trademark searches…including an increase in search queries that involve the advertiser’s trademark brand name.”

What that means is that even though the click through rates on the campaigns were relatively low, the ad campaigns were still effective because they raised brand awareness and conversions over time. 

Are view throughs trustable?

Although I don’t know the tests setup, I tend to believe that the ads were shown on sites that were relevant to the ones advertised. This means that the visitors seeing the ads were already in a mind set that included that specific area and thus might have reached the advertised site on their own.

According to DoubleClick:

“View-through metrics may not be entirely accurate, as they also capture activity that occurs as the result of offline ad recall or other stimulus”

I agree that viewing an ad has an impact on the viewer; however I am not certain that it’s as big as ComScore claims it to be. What is important is that the  view through metrics are becoming more acknowledged as important key performance indicators. And as more and more tests will be done to measure the true effect of post-impressions on online campaigns performance, the metrics will become more accurate and reliable.

All we can do until that happens is continue to optimize our online campaigns for clicks and consider the view-through visits as a very valuable added bonus.