This is the first article in our series 'Emerse on Quality' where we discuss important topics in digital advertising quality control. We have decided to break down the big topic of quality into several small and more easily accessible chunks. We identify what we call 'defect' ad impressions and what advertisers can do to avoid buying them. With the purpose of increasing quality of ad campaigns and thereby also ad campaign performance.
Before we start we want to mention that Emerse works for advertisers to deliver quality and cost controlled programmatic advertising. We do this by employing a process of quality management which is traditionally more often found in areas such as manufacturing. To learn more about the work we do please feel free to contact our sales team to set up a meeting.
What is ad reload time?
"Ad reload time" refers to the interval between when one advertisement is displayed and when it is replaced or refreshed with another advertisement on a web page or in an app. This concept is particularly relevant in the context of digital advertising where ads can be dynamically loaded and swapped without needing to refresh the entire page.
The reload time can be set to different durations depending on the strategy of the advertiser or the publisher. A shorter reload time can increase the number of ads shown to a user, potentially increasing revenue. However, it can also impact user experience negatively if ads refresh too frequently, which might be distracting or annoying for users.
Why is ad reload time important for advertisers to be aware of?
If you buy for example display banner advertising and run using programmatic channels on thousands of websites and apps, each of these publishers can set their own ad reload times. Some might reload the banner once for every page visit, others might reload the banner position once every 30 seconds. But some might reload it every 3 seconds. If you consider this and the impact it has on the value of the ad impression bought it is easy to see that an ad position that reloads after 3 seconds offers a significantly lower chance of being seen or read by a visitor while an ad that is available on screen for the whole duration of the page visit is more likely to be seen by the visitor, and when seen the visitor will also have time to read and see the content of the banner.
Too fast ad reload times reduce the chance that the visitor will even see the ad on the page before it is reloaded. Chances are even if they see it they won't have time to click it before it is reloaded with another ad from another advertiser. So this can be a big problem for advertisers.
Example
Heres an example of what fast ad reload can look like. Here you have 3 banners all reloading with 2 second intervals:
What can advertisers do to handle this?
First of all being aware of the differences in quality various publishers offer is important. Not all publishers offer the same number of seconds in ad visibility for an impression.
The ad reload time is often regulated by policies by the ad networks, ad exchanges and supply side platforms used by the publishers. Demand Side Platforms can also set their own policies on what ad reload times they permit. Being aware of this enables the advertiser to buy from sources with good quality ad reload times permitted.
When curating sitelists for campaigns or when reviewing traffic from delivery reports, having ad reload time as a parameter in quality control should be considered. If the reload time is too short, chances are ad impressions will not have the effect they are intended to.
The quality control process at Emerse includes ad reload time and we work to ensure our customers are not buying impressions from inventory with too low such times.
If you would like help in buying display, video, banner and programmatic advertising campaigns with quality controls in place, please contact us to schedule a meeting with our sales team.