Viewable impressions and viewable rate (Active View)

Source: Google Ads Help, Understanding viewability and Active View reporting metrics.

Active View works on the Display Network, YouTube and Google video partners. It cannot measure every impression, since some sites and apps do not allow it. Measurable rate says what share of your impressions it could check.

The base matters. Viewable rate is out of measurable impressions, not out of all impressions. A 60% viewable rate at a 50% measurable rate tells you about half your traffic, and nothing about the other half. Search ads get no Active View figures.

What moves it

Position on the page comes first: an ad near the content is seen far more than one in a footer or a sidebar people scroll past. Format next: large and in-content formats tend to be seen more. Then the site itself, its layout and how fast its visitors scroll.

A worked example

A travel insurer spends €2,000 a month on Display. Active View measured 600,000 of its impressions and counted 240,000 as viewable, a 40% viewable rate.

The placement report shows two mobile apps with 12% viewable rates taking a third of the spend. The insurer excludes them. The next month, with the same budget, the viewable rate reaches 55% and site visits from Display rise.

1. Open Campaigns, click the Columns icon, then Modify columns.
2. In Viewability, tick Viewable impr., Viewable rate, Measurable impr. and Measurable rate.
3. Add Viewable CTR and the viewable CPM to see what seen impressions brought and cost.
4. Open the report of where your ads showed and read the same columns per placement.

Optizads stores Viewable impr., Measurable impr. and Measurable cost for each campaign and each day, and adds them up for the period. Viewable rate comes from those sums. Measurable rate is weighted by each day's impressions, and Viewable CPM is rebuilt from each day's rate and viewable impressions.

Viewable CTR is read as Google totals it for the days you pick, kept for 30 minutes, with the stored days standing in when Google cannot be read.

All seven sit in the Active View group of the metric picker: Viewable impr., Viewable rate, Viewable CTR, Viewable CPM, Measurable impr., Measurable rate and Measurable cost. A Key figures card with Viewable rate, Viewable CPM and Avg. CPM shows a client what the seen part of their reach cost; the report builder holds up to eight figures in that card.

• Reading viewable rate as a share of all impressions instead of measurable ones.
• Ignoring a low measurable rate, which leaves most of the traffic unchecked.
• Judging a placement on CPM without its viewable rate.
• Expecting Active View figures on Search campaigns.

• Display Network: Websites and apps where Google shows image and text ads.
• Placement: A website, app or YouTube channel where a Display or Video ad showed.
• Responsive display ad: A Display ad Google assembles from your images, logos, headlines and descriptions to fit each slot.
• Impression: One showing of an ad.

• Average CPM: Average CPM is what a thousand impressions of your ads cost on average: spend divided by impressions, times 1,000.
• Video view rate: Video view rate is the share of your video ad impressions that became views: views divided by impressions.
• Ad engagement rate: Engagement rate in Google Ads is engagements divided by impressions: how often people engage with an ad after it is shown.