New technology from native ad company, Vibrant Media, has slashed the ad weight for its In-Text, In-Image, out-of-stream video and high impact native ad formats by over 75% to just 30.5 KB.
The new ad technology supports the Internet Advertising Bureau’s industry-wide LEAN initiative to tackle the rise in ad blocking and to improve the quality of digital advertising from consumers’ perspective.
The new LEAN principles were launched by the IAB’s Tech Lab in October 2015. IAB UK is due to publish a set of LEAN standards in October 2016 as part of a wider Charter on digital advertising best practice. LEAN stands for “Light”, “Encrypted”, “Ad Choice Supported” and “Non-Invasive”.
IAB UK’s Director of Data & Industry Programmes, Steve Chester said, “The IAB believes in an ad-funded internet. Ad technologies and marketing strategies need to change in response to ad blocking. The IAB is working with industry players, such as Vibrant Media, to bring the fine equilibrium of content, commerce and technology back into balance for the open web and its consumers. Tackling ad weight, security, consumer choice, intrusiveness, frequency, volume and moderation are some of the keys ways to improving consumers’ experience of the creative advertising that supports digital publishers. These are the first step to combating ad blocking.”
The new LEAN principles were launched by the IAB’s Tech Lab in October 2015. View the five principles below:
LIGHT
Comparing like-for-like formats, Vibrant Media’s ad weight is lighter than all its leading competitors. The in-text ad formats provided by Vibrant Media’s closest competitor are 380 per cent heavier than Vibrant Media’s. The industry’s most popular out-of-stream video ads are 290 per cent heavier. Widely displayed rich media ads and in-image ads are 46 per cent and 25 per cent heavier respectively.
ENCRYPTED
All of the ads that Vibrant Media displays are hosted on secure servers and are communicated through HTTPS connections from end-to-end. Vibrant also continuously scans brands’ ads for malware and other vulnerabilities.
AD CHOICE SUPPORTED
Consumer control and choice has always been at the heart of the digital marketing strategies Vibrant Media’s technology enables. Vibrant was an early adopter of the AdChoices industry self-regulation program which enables consumers to opt out of being served behaviourally targeted advertising. However, as the ads Vibrant Media serves are contextually-relevant to the editorial content they are displayed within, consumers still see digital ads that are keenly targeted to what interests them, even if they have chosen not to share data on their interests.
NON-INVASIVE
Nimble, non-invasive native ads are Vibrant Media’s stock-in-trade. Triggers for Vibrant Media’s ads sit natively within publishers’ content as green double-underlined hyperlinks within editorial text. Hence they unobtrusively fit the form and function of the digital content they’re displayed within. Publishers control both the number of Vibrant Media’s native ads displayed within their content and the frequency with which each brands’ advertisements are displayed to consumers. As the formats are user-initiated, consumers never have to see a brand’s ad unless they actively choose to by either tapping or hovering their mouse over one of the ad triggers.
COMPLIANCE
Maintaining its reputation for innovation, early adoption of best practice and industry leadership, Vibrant Media has applied the LEAN principles to its ads. This ensures that they perform at the highest standards and can deliver a premium consumer experience. The native ad company plans to be one of the first signatories to the IAB’s new Charter, and through its technical development and continuing work with the IAB, it expects to be one of the first companies to be deemed to be compliant with the LEAN standards when they are published, and into the future.
Founder and Executive Chairman of Vibrant Media, Craig Gooding, said, “Advertisers do not have to compromise ad viewability to comply with the LEAN principles. They just have to choose the right technology. Testing by Moat gives Vibrant Media’s ads a 93 per cent score based on the MRC viewability guidelines. Simply checking the contents of an Internet browser’s developer console shows how light our ad weight is compared to competitors.”
“The best solution to ad blocking is improving consumers’ experience so they never feel the need for an adblocker in the first place. Whilst the ad industry seeks to improve viewability it must also display higher quality, more relevant, less interruptive advertising to appeal to consumers – and less advertising as a whole. Vibrant Media operates on a “less is more” approach. We only show ads to one in ten of the consumers that visit a page where the ads are available. Advertisers only pay for the ads that those consumers actually choose to see.
However, those ten per cent of consumers engage and act upon the ads far more intensely than lesser ads and deliver the equivalent monetisation of 10 non-Vibrant ads to a publisher. That said, publishers need to reduce the amount of ad clutter on their pages, especially at the top.
The more ads put in front of consumers, the more likely they’re going to use an ad blocker.”
IAB UK’s Director of Data & Industry Programmes, Steve Chester said, “The IAB UK believes in an ad-funded internet. Ad technologies and marketing strategies need to change in response to ad blocking. The IAB UK is working with industry players, such as Vibrant Media, to bring the fine equilibrium of content, commerce and technology back into balance for the open web and its consumers. Tackling ad weight, security, consumer choice, intrusiveness, frequency, volume and moderation are some of the keys ways to improving consumers’ experience of the creative advertising that supports digital publishers. These are the first step to combating ad blocking.”