PAGE 1

validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE®) BENCHMARKSNormative Analysis of In-Target and In-View Rates for U.S. Campaigns

U.S. EDITION / Q1 2014

© 2014 comScore, Inc. comScore®, Media Metrix® (MMX™), validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE®) and validated Media Essentials™ (vME™) are the trademarks of comScore, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their owners. For information about the proprietary technology used in comScore products, please refer to http://www.comscore.com/About_comScore/Patents.

PAGE 3

Introduction

When it comes to assessing the delivery performance of digital campaigns, having a relative benchmark across a variety of delivery dimensions is an important component of the campaign planning and evaluation process. These benchmarks provide necessary context for clients using comScore validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE®) to evaluate the delivery performance of their own campaigns. Specifically, they help media buyers and sellers set expectations during the negotiation process, and they illustrate how performance often differs.

This analysis focuses specifically on viewability and in-target delivery across a variety of demographic groups. It leverages a multitude of U.S. campaigns from vCE, comprising more than 200 billion impressions over the course of a rolling 12-month period. The analysis includes both display and video campaigns for a diverse set of advertisers with either brand-building or direct-response objectives.

Because of the varied nature of campaigns in this analysis, it is important to remember that many factors impact in-view and in-target delivery levels, including, but not limited to, the campaign’s objective and targeting strategy. While these benchmarks can shed light on the relative performance of a campaign, they should not be used as the only indicator of success.

Key findings include:• Delivering close to 100% in-target and/or 100% in-view is not realistic

for a variety of reasons

• In-view and in-target delivery rates vary across Advertiser / Product categories, and the reasons are often unique to the category

• As the target audience narrows, the likelihood of hitting the target diminishes

• Non-human traffic (NHT) can have a significant impact on viewability

PAGE 4

WHAT’S NORMAL?

As digital is the most measureable and targetable medium, there’s a prevailing belief that every ad impression should be able to hit its TARGET AUDIENCE with precision and that every ad should be VIEWABLE TO THE TARGET CONSUMER. In reality, this isn’t the case and there are some simple – although not necessarily obvious – reasons why.

Figure 1

In-Target: 100% isn’t Realistic

HERE’S WHY

Demographic data becomes outdated

More than 60% of computers are shared, so cookies can show ads to the wrong person

Not all registrationdata is accurate

Some targeting infers demography based on content consumption

PAGE 5

In-View: 100% isn’t Realistic

HERE’S WHY

User’s browser isn’t on full-screen setting

User leavespage before 1 second

Non-human traffic drives up impression counts, when a person never actually saw the ad

Figure 2

PAGE 6

*The Overall Norm comprises data from more than 200 billion impressions over the course of a 12-month rolling period. This includes campaigns that go beyond the select Advertiser / Product categories listed above to also include additional Advertiser / Product categories as well as studies run directly by publishers and ad networks. **The Health / Wellness category includes campaigns for brands, products and/or services in the following sectors: health associations, health insurance, hospitals, over-the-counter, pharmaceutical, public health and wellness.

COMSCORE vCE BENCHMARKS / Audience

The analysis of audience delivery found an overall average in-target rate of 44%. This means that across all campaigns in the normative data set, 44% of the impressions reached the intended target audience. In vCE, target audience is categorized based on the primary target selection, which is self-designated during campaign set-up.

When analyzing this data, it is important to remember that it is not realistic for a campaign to deliver 100% of its impressions to the right target (as highlighted in Figure 1). It is also important to note that impressions that land outside of the target audience may also deliver value to the campaign by reaching and influencing other consumers. Thus, not all impressions that fall outside of the target should be viewed as wasted impressions.

COMPUTER /TECHNOLOGY

TELECOM TRAVEL AUTO HEALTH / WELLNESS**

FINANCE RETAIL CONSUMER GOODS

MEDIA / ENTERTAINMENT

Overall norm: 44%

64%100%

0%

60% 53% 52% 50% 46% 42% 42% 41%

Figure 3. % In-Target: Overall* and by Select Advertiser / Product Category Source: comScore vCE Benchmarks, Q1 2014, U.S.

PAGE 7

When evaluating these benchmarks by Advertiser / Product category, there is significant variance across the categories, with a range of 23 percentage points from the highest- to lowest-performing categories (see Figure 3). On the high end, Computer / Technology generated an average in-target rate of 64%, whereas Consumer Goods generated an average in-target rate of 41%.

At first look, it might seem counterintuitive that a category such as Consumer Goods – consisting largely of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturers that tend to be sophisticated marketers – under-indexes in terms of in-target delivery. There are two likely reasons for this outcome:

1. Many of these CPG manufacturers targeted Females 18-49, the same target commonly used in TV advertising. In fact, Females 18-49 was the most popular reported target in the CPG category. This target is relatively narrow compared to what we see in other categories, such as Telecommunications or Travel, making it harder for these CPG campaigns to reach the intended target. In fact, when looking specifically at the benchmark for Females 18-49 (see Figure 5), the CPG category overall actually outperforms the norm of the demographic break by 2 percentage points, suggesting relatively strong performance among CPG advertisers given the tighter constraints.

2. Many of these CPG advertisers are likely layering on additional targeting, beyond demos. Such targeting might include retargeting or purchase-based targeting, meaning that the campaign might be hitting an important audience that happens to fall outside of the self-designated target demographic of Female 18-49. For example, if a CPG manufacturer used first-party data to target coupon downloaders from its site, the campaign might do a good job of hitting those coupon downloaders. However, if several of them are male, the topline in-target performance data will not account for this group.

The Health/Wellness category is another example of a category that delivers slightly lower than average in-target rates, due to the nature of the way ads are bought and sold in the category. Health/Wellness advertisers don’t typically execute a lot of audience-based targeting. Instead, they tend to buy ads directly on endemic-content sites, making in-target delivery and associated norms a less meaningful indicator of success than in other categories.

PAGE 8

As Target Narrows, So Does the Chance of Hitting It

Not surprisingly, the more targeted the campaign, the harder it becomes to reach that target audience. This is why understanding the size of the demographic target and the likelihood of hitting that target relative to broader targets, via a tool like comScore Media Metrix®, is a critical component of campaign analysis.

The following set of data highlights just how varied in-target delivery can be based on the size of the target group. For example, there are far more Persons 18+ online than Persons 35-54 (as reported in Media Metrix), which explains why it is easier to reach Persons 18+.

88%

66%56%

42%

Persons 18+ Persons 18-49 Persons 25-54 Persons 35-44

Figure 4. % In-Target by Age Source: comScore vCE Benchmarks, Q1 2014, U.S.

PAGE 9

In-Target Delivery Varies

Similar trends are seen when evaluating Female and Male groups. In most cases, the broader target and/or the target that is more prevalent online performs better in terms of in-target delivery than smaller, harder to reach target audiences.

vCE Targeting Efficiency IndexIn addition to leveraging vCE benchmarks, the vCE Targeting Efficiency Index – a metric reported in vCE – can also help you set expectations by comparing in-target impression delivery to the prevalence of that target on a site, based on data from Media Metrix.

For example, if vCE reports that a site delivered 50% in-target for Males 18-34 on a given campaign, and the composition of Males 18-34 on that site according to Media Metrix is 30%, then the Targeting Efficiency Index would be calculated as such: (50% / 30%) X 100 = 166.

So, even though the in-target rate is only 50%, the delivery actually over-indexed and performed quite well when compared to the composition of that target audience on the site.

Figure 5. % In-Target by Age/Gender Source: comScore vCE Benchmarks, Q1 2014, U.S.

FEMALES MALES

18-49

43%

18-34 YRS OLD

42%

25-54

42%

18-49

45%

18-34YRS OLD

35%

25-54

36%

25-49

37%

35-64

31%

25-49

32%

21-34

33%

25-34

33%

PAGE 10

COMSCORE vCE BENCHMARKS / Viewability

The analysis of viewability across campaigns in the database found an overall average in-view rate of 46%. This means that across all campaigns in the data set, 46% of the campaign impressions had the opportunity to be seen by a consumer.

There are a variety of reasons why impressions might not be in-view, and many of them are outlined in Figure 2. One of the most common reasons is non-human traffic (NHT). According to the IAB-proposed guidelines for viewable impressions, NHT should not be counted as a viewable impression, which is why vCE filters out NHT as part of its viewability reporting.

COMPUTER /TECHNOLOGY

TELECOMTRAVEL AUTOHEALTH / WELLNESS***

FINANCERETAILCONSUMER GOODS

MEDIA / ENTERTAINMENT

49% 48% 47% 47% 46% 45% 40% 40% 36%

Figure 6. % In-View: Overall* and by Select Advertiser / Product Category** Source: comScore vCE Benchmarks, Q1 2014, U.S.

Overall norm: 46%

100%

0%

*The Overall Norm comprises data from more than 200 billion impressions over the course of a 12-month rolling period. This includes campaigns that go beyond the select Advertiser / Product categories listed above to also include additional Advertiser / Product categories as well as studies run directly by publishers and ad networks.**Viewability benchmarks include display campaigns only; viewability is defined as 50% of the ad’s pixels in-view for at least one second. ***The Health / Wellness category includes campaigns for brands, products and/or services in the following sectors: health associations, health insurance, hospitals, over-the-counter, pharmaceutical, public health and wellness.

PAGE 11

The Travel, Health / Wellness, Computer / Technology and Consumer Goods categories over-indexed relative to the overall viewability benchmark. The likely reason each of these categories out-performed the norm, however, varies greatly from category to category:

• Advertisers that fall into the Travel and the Computer / Technology categories in the normative database often leverage direct-response campaigns, a strategy that makes sense given that the products/services in these categories are often sold online. These marketers have gotten very good at remarketing based on interest.

• Health / Wellness advertisers tend to advertise on high-quality premium placements, given the nature of Health / Wellness sites and legal restrictions around content and context of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) digital advertising.

• The CPG category is comprised of several of the largest CPG manufacturers in the U.S. Many of these advertisers are using programmatic methods to execute campaigns, but they are also very closely managing delivery based on viewability, in-target delivery and other key performance indicators (KPIs). Kellogg is a great example of a CPG advertiser that has successfully optimized against these metrics.

Finance (which includes advertisers for services such as credit cards, banks, insurance, etc.) and Telecom are two categories that experienced relatively low levels of viewability, a likely result of advertisers in these categories tending toward mass marketing campaigns that are untargeted. In such cases, the advertisers may be focusing more on reach and less on the premium nature of the delivery.

COMSCORE SOLUTIONS FOR MEDIA BUYERS & SELLERS

learnmore@comscore.com www.comscore.com/BestPractices

comScore validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE®) is a holistic ad and audience delivery validation solution that provides deep campaign insights, in-flight reporting and daily alerting.

• Used by media buyers and sellers• Enables in-flight campaign management and optimization• Evaluates audience delivery, viewability, brand safety, geographic delivery,

engagement and non-human traffic• Reports data by publisher, placement and creative • Enables increased campaign effectiveness and decreased waste

comScore validated Media Essentials™ (vME™) is a comprehensive measurement solution that evaluates ad inventory across a site or network of sites for strategic pricing and packaging.

• Used exclusively by media sellers• Measures ad inventory across a site or network of sites• Evaluates audience, viewability, engagement, geographic delivery and

non-human traffic• Reports data by ad slot, site section and creative size• Enables increased revenue by maximizing high-value inventory