New research from comScore shows that a whopping 5.3 trillion display ad impressions were delivered in the US throughout 2012. Top industries by impression were online media, retail, finance, telecommunications and consumer goods.
But of those 5.3 trillion ads, 3 in 10 were never rendered in-view, meaning that they were paid for but never actually seen by users. According to the report this leads to “significant waste, weaker campaign performance and a glut of poor-performing inventory that imbalances the supply-and-demand equation and depresses CPMs.”
Said waste is actually nothing new though; according to last year’s Digital Future In Focus report, a consistent 31% of ad impressions were never seen by consumers.
As a means for combatting the waste issue, comScore predicts that we’ll see advertisers begin “to demand more accountability and publishers to reconfigure their site design and ad inventory to improve performance in the coming year.” Another study from Marin Software and Forrester supports this push for accountability, with reports that 80% of North American marketers will be responsible for increased revenue accountability in the coming year.
