The latest Integral Ad Science Media Quality Report provides benchmarks for viewability, brand safety, ad fraud, and time-in-view across display and mobile web advertising across Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark

06 November, 2018 – Integral Ad Science (IAS), the global data and technology company that empowers the advertising industry to effectively grow the world’s leading brands, has released its bi-annual Media Quality Report for H1 2018 focused on the Nordic region – Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.

The report reveals that viewability* across the Nordic region is stronger than the global average. Looking at desktop display, the Nordics overall achieves a 66.5% rate of viewability versus 61.6% for global impressions. In particular Finland and Norway lead, with 68% and 67.7% of measured inventory found to be viewable respectively. For mobile web display, the Nordic region achieves 52.3% viewability compared to the global 52.2% benchmark. Again, Norway presents a strong viewability rate within mobile web display at 60.3%.

For the first time, the Nordics report includes time-in-view benchmarks – the length of time that a impression is in view over the duration of a campaign. For desktop display, the Nordics performs strongly compared to the global average (totalling 11.89 seconds versus 11.08 seconds).

When looking at brand safety on desktop, advertisers in the Nordic region are more likely to appear alongside risky content compared to the global average – with 7.3% of impressions appearing next to risky content versus 6% globally. Looking at country level, Sweden has experienced a sharp decline in risk posed to a brand’s safety online, especially within desktop (down from 17.5% in H2 2017, to 5.7%). This is predominately thanks to improvements on brand risk associated with programmatic buys. Norway in particular experiences an extremely low level of brand risk at 1.6%, whereas Denmark tops the region with over 1 in 10 impressions appearing next to unsavoury content, at 11%.

When looking at optimised ad fraud levels – where ad fraud detection technology is in place – the Nordics has a strong proposition, with 0.2% of desktop impressions flagged for fraudulent activity compared to 0.8% globally, and for mobile web display, 0.1% compared to 0.5% globally.

Björn Lindholm, Sales Director for Nordic Region at Integral Ad Science, comments: “To enable effective media planning and buying, a holistic understanding of media quality performance is essential in today’s digital advertising ecosystem. A deep understanding of the global media marketplace and individual market nuances is crucial to maximise budgets and results.”

Lindholm continues: “Together, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, present a strong proposition, our latest report reflects the advancements made to improve the measurement of digital advertising performance across the region.”

Integral Ad Science’s H1 2018 Media Quality Report highlights brand safety, ad fraud, viewability, and time-in-view trends for programmatic and publisher direct advertising across display and mobile web advertising. The Media Quality Report analysed data from over 500 billion global impressions, from advertising campaigns that ran between January 1st and June 30th 2018. The full Nordics report (comprising of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark) can be viewed here, and the full global report can be viewed here.

*Viewability is determined for display and mobile ads as 50% of the ad unit in view for one continuous second as per MRC standards