Active View tracks the viewability of ads served. Viewability helps determine how likely it is that an ad was actually seen by a user. Two important factors are (1) what percentage of an ad appears in a viewable space on screen and (2) how long that portion of the ad remains visible. Measuring viewability helps publishers and advertisers assess the value of an impression.
Consider a placement at the bottom of a webpage. If a user needs to scroll down to see the bottom of the page, the user might not see the ad before navigating away. Yet for a user with a larger screen, the entire page might appear in a viewable space—which means the ad is visible, too. Both scenarios count as impressions, but only viewability tracks whether the ad actually became visible to the user for a meaningful length of time.
Learn more about Viewability and Active View.
Learn about Viewability with Google.
Active View metrics
To report on Active View metrics, select them from their respective report metric families (for example, Total, Ad server, Ad Exchange).
If your ads are being served by a third-party and you want Active View metrics broken down by vendor, include the "Third-party vendor" attribute from the "Creative" dimension. Learn more about dimension attributes
Total number of impressions that were eligible to measure viewability. An impression is eligible if (a) the ad's creative has an Active View enabled tag, and (b) the impression is counted with a downloaded pingback.
Impressions that were measurable by Active View out of the total number of eligible impressions. This value should generally be close to 100%; however, even when an ad tag has Active View enabled, some factors may prevent the tag from capturing data. For example, an impression that is rendering in a cross-domain iframe may not be measurable.
Number of impressions on the site that were viewable out of all measurable impressions. A display ad is counted as viewable if at least 50% of its area was displayed on screen for at least one second (the minimum criteria according to IAB measurement standards). For in-stream video ads, 50% of its area must be displayed for at least two seconds.
Active View % measurable impressions
Percentage of impressions that were measurable with Active View, out of the total number of Active View eligible impressions.
Formula: (measurable impressions ∕ eligible impressions) × 100
An ad is measurable when the Active View enabled tag successfully captured viewability information about the impression. Viewable impression measurement tools experience a small amount of data loss in addition to measurement gaps from some cross-domain iframe scenarios.
Ad Manager's measurability metric focuses on actual measurement gaps, which you can resolve by removing iframes (learn more about troubleshooting viewability). The data loss is randomly distributed across viewable and measurable impressions, and therefore % Measurable is a reliable indicator of measurability for the publisher's inventory.
Active View % viewable impressions
Percentage of viewable impressions out of all measurable impressions.
Formula: (viewable impressions ∕ measurable impressions) × 100
The ads on your site had 100 measurable impressions. That means there were 100 impressions where Active View enabled tags were able to measure viewability. If only 10 of those 100 impressions were measured as viewable, then the site would have 10% viewable impressions.
Active View average viewable time (seconds)
The total viewable time on screen divided by the number of impressions where time on screen could be measured.
For example, if there were 150 impressions but time on screen could be measured for only 100 of them, and those 100 impressions were viewed for a total of 600 seconds, then the Active View average viewable time would be 6 seconds.
This metric works across display, mobile web, and video inventory.
Active View non-viewable impressions
Total number of impressions that were measured, but deemed not viewable.
Active View non-measurable impressions
Total number of impressions that were not measured (e.g., impressions where measurement was attempted and failed).
Active View viewable impression distribution
Percent of impressions where measurement was attempted, succeeded, and deemed viewable.
Formula: (# Viewable impressions) ∕ (# Active View Eligible Impressions)
Active View non-viewable impression distribution
Percent of impressions where measurement was attempted, succeeded and deemed non-viewable.
Formula: (# Not viewable Impressions) ∕ (# Active View Eligible Impressions)
Active View revenue
Revenue generated from Active View impressions. A display ad is counted as viewable if at least 50% of its area was displayed on screen for at least one second (the minimum criteria according to IAB measurement standards). For in-stream video ads, 50% of its area must be displayed for at least two seconds.
Ad Server Active View Revenue
Revenue generated from Ad Server Active View impressions. A display ad is counted as viewable if at least 50% of its area was displayed on screen for at least one second (the minimum criteria according to IAB measurement standards). For in-stream video ads, 50% of its area must be displayed for at least two seconds.
AdSense Active View RevenueDeprecated
Revenue generated from AdSense Active View impressions. A display ad is counted as viewable if at least 50% of its area was displayed on screen for at least one second (the minimum criteria according to IAB measurement standards). For in-stream video ads, 50% of its area must be displayed for at least two seconds.
Ad Exchange Active View RevenueDeprecated
Revenue generated from Ad Exchange Active View impressions. A display ad is counted as viewable if at least 50% of its area was displayed on screen for at least one second (the minimum criteria according to IAB measurement standards). For in-stream video ads, 50% of its area must be displayed for at least two seconds.
Active View undetermined impression distribution
Percent of impressions where measurement was attempted, but measurement did not succeed.
Formula: (# Not measurable impressions) ∕ (# Eligible impressions)
Some inventory may not be eligible or measurable
There are instances where Active View eligible or measurable impressions are less than served impressions:
- An ad request URL exceeding a character limit is truncated. These impressions are not eligible. You can detect a truncated ad request URL if the parameter
trunc=1has been appended. Learn more about GPT request modes and asynchronous rendering. - Serving an eligible tag within a cross-domain iframe affects our ability to capture viewability data. These impressions may not be measurable.
- Communication issues may arise due to a problem with the browser or internet connection that occurs before the tag can finish sending data to the Google Ad Manager servers. For example, a user might close the browser too soon for the tag to finish establishing communication.
- We don't measure viewability for out-of-page and companion creatives.
Learn more about Using the Publisher Console to troubleshoot delivery problems.
