What is actually ... a visibility rate?

Visibility rate is a fixed value in the field of online advertising marketing. The value is used to measure the visibility of a specific advertising placement. It is the ratio between ad impressions displayed to the user in the visible area of the browser window and the total ad impressions of the same advertising placement. It is customary in the industry to speak of a seen ad as soon as 50 percent of the advertising material has been displayed to the user for at least one second. The visibility rate is measured on the basis of one specific placement at a time, rather than across the entire website (all existing placements). However, it is not only the placements themselves that are decisive for visibility, such as Above the Fold, Below the Fold or Sticky.

The user's screen size, the size of the file or the loading speed of the advertising material can also have an influence. These influences make reliable measurement difficult. At the same time, the visibility rate is becoming increasingly important. Because with the help of this value, an advertising playout is not basically equivalent to a pure ad impression. Accordingly, many advertisers are increasingly raising their quality requirements for the visibility rate. This confronts publishers and marketers even more strongly with the challenge of meeting the advertising clients' requirements in the future.

Term explained by: Tobias Eisner, Technical Partner Manager at Goldbach Audience.