Australians spend more time viewing mobile web display ads than consumers in any other major global market, according to a new report that also notes the risk to brands from advertising online in Australia is one of the lowest in the world.
Integral Ad Science (IAS), a digital ad verification firm, published its global Media Quality Report earlier this month with details about viewability, ad fraud and brand risk.
Building on that, IAS has now published its findings for Australia over the first half of 2019 and revealed that the average time in-view for mobile web display ads stood at 18.47 seconds, with the US in second place at 16.19 seconds.
Australia also ranked high for time spent viewing desktop display ads. At 25.18 seconds, Australia came third globally, behind Italy at 28.66 seconds and Spain at 26.22 seconds, with the global average coming in at 23.53 seconds.
IAS said the results showed that “publishers in Australia have responded to advertiser demands and created relevant, engaging content and online experiences to garner longer ad exposure time, a great proxy for attention and engagement”.
There was also good news for Australian brands and advertisers in terms of viewability and brand risk. For example, at 77.7%, Australia had the second-highest viewability rate in the world for desktop video during the first half of the year.
And over the same period Australia reduced brand risk for desktop display by 63% year-on-year to just 2.5% – a rate far below the global average of 4.7% of impressions flagged as appearing next to offensive content.
Brand risk for mobile web display dropped to 3.0% in the first half of the year, down an impressive 60% year-on-year, while Australia also ranked below the global average for desktop video brand risk.
However, ad fraud continued to rise in Australia across platforms. Compared with the first half of 2018, desktop display ad fraud increased 66.6%, desktop video saw a rise of 43% while mobile web display fraud climbed 20%.
Commenting on this last finding, James Diamond, Integral Ad Science’s managing director ANZ, said: “European privacy laws have reduced the effectiveness of cookies and illegal bot operators are finding it increasingly difficult to retarget in Europe, shifting their focus to other lucrative markets with scale, such as Australia and the US.
“As we head into Q4, advertisers must stay vigilant as fraudsters typically chase increased ad spend during the lucrative holiday shopping period.”
The article was published in WARC.
