London, UK, 27 September 2016: Integral Ad Science (IAS), the technology and data company that empowers the advertising industry to effectively reach and influence consumers everywhere, today released findings from its H1 2016 UK Media Quality Report. Skyscraper ads (160x600px) were found to be the ad format with highest viewability* at 66.8% in view, followed by double MPUs (300x600px) with 61.2% in view, and billboard ads (970x250px) – one of the IAB’s Rising Star formats, – with exactly 60% in view. This data shows viewability rates do not rise in correlation with ad size

Paul Nasse, UK Commercial Director, Integral Ad Science, comments, “The data from our latest UK Media Quality Report highlights that there needs to be a greater understanding across the industry in the effectiveness of ad formats when analysing viewability. Size does not equal success and ad position should be considered in a holistic approach to successful and impactful ad placements.”

The IAS report highlights further media quality findings across UK display and video advertising, showing the overall rate of viewability in the UK to be 57.4%, the rate of ad fraud at 3.2%, and the rate of brand risk – ads served next to content deemed inappropriate – at 7.8% during the first half of 2016.

When comparing display ad impressions bought through programmatic channels versus directly with a publisher, viewability rates were found to be 57% and 62% respectively. Ad fraud risk came in at 3.2% for programmatic and 2.6% for direct. Brand safety risk came in at 8% for programmatic and 6.8% for direct.

Analysis of the global performance of video advertising, found that viewability rates more than doubled when trading direct with publishers (64.5%), compared to trading programmatically (32.1%). In 2015, UK video ad spend grew 50.7% to £711 million, however wasted video ad spend can be seen in data from H1 2016 report as 8.9% of video ads were found to be fraudulent and 4% of video ads were never started; a figure that reduces to 1.6% when analysing purely direct buys.

The H1 2016 UK Media Quality Report is based on insights collected from over 100 billion ad impressions analysed between 1^st January and 30^th June 2016. The full report can be viewed at http://go.integralads.com/mqr-2016-h1-uk

*Viewability is determined as 50% of the ad unit in view for one continuous second, large formats as 30% of the ad unit in view for one continuous second and video formats as 50% of the ad unit in view for two continuous seconds as per MRC standard