Active View is a Google measurement solution that detects viewable display ad impressions. Google detects viewability via a piece of code that captures the cumulative time an ad has been viewed.
Active View data is available in Report Builder reports. Both supported creative types, and tag types must be used.
Supported creative types
List of supported creative types| Creative type | Supported |
|---|---|
| Custom display | Yes |
| Custom display interstitial | No |
| Display | Yes |
| In-stream audio | Reduced availability |
| In-stream video | Reduced availability |
| Display redirect | Yes |
| In-stream video redirect | Reduced availability |
| Rich media display expanding | Yes |
| Rich media display interstitial | Yes |
| Rich media display banner | Yes |
| Rich media VPAID | Reduced availability |
Supported tag types
JavaScript, iframe/JavaScript, ins, and VAST tags are supported, but we recommend that you use ins tags for the best Active View coverage. Impression image tracking ads will provide Active View metrics only for placements that serve on YouTube with enhanced YouTube tracking. All other tag types are not supported.
Mobile impressions
Active View measures impressions on mobile web and also impressions from mobile apps integrated with the Google Mobile Ads SDK. Since both mobile web and mobile app impressions are associated with display placements, Active View coverage will be different depending on where the placement serves:
| Placement location | Eligible for Active View | Impressions counted |
| Only inside an app | partial | Impressions counted for Active View via Google Mobile Ads SDK |
| Only on mobile web | Yes | Impressions counted for Active View |
| On mobile web and inside an app | Yes |
Mobile web impressions counted for Active View; |
To ensure accurate data for rich media creatives on mobile web, please make sure that the creatives are newly generated or have been created since May 13, 2014 (using rich media Studio rendering library version 200_40 or later). You can generate a new creative from an existing live creative by incrementing its version number (when editing the creative, check the Increment version number on save check box).
In-stream video and in-stream video redirect creatives
In-stream video, VPAID, and in-stream video redirect creatives may have reduced availability for features that rely on VPAID, such as Active View and Campaign Manager 360 Verification, based on how the publisher serves video ads. For these creative types to support measurement, you must have Active View enabled in in-stream video placement settings.
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In-stream video creatives: Available if the publisher supports VPAID or uses the IMA SDK to serve video ads.
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In-stream video redirect creatives: Available if the publisher supports VPAID or uses the IMA SDK to serve video ads. You also need to set the VPAID measurement adapter in your placement in-stream video settings to "On" and cannot use the “Let Campaign Manager 360 decide” option. This prevents Campaign Manager 360 from sending a blank tag if a publisher does not support VPAID..
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VPAID creatives: Available if the publisher supports VPAID or uses the IMA SDK to serve video ads.
You can check with your publisher to see if these features will be available for their site.
Video creatives served on connected TV devices
Connected TV devices often can’t support the standard implementation for Active View-enabled tags. In order to accurately reflect user behavior on these devices, we infer measurements for connected TVs based on heuristic calculations. An impression is considered audible and viewable on a connected TV device if:
- It comes from a known connected TV device based on the user-agent;
- It serves on an app or site from a set of top publishers; and
- The video has played for at least 2 consecutive seconds.
Possible end-of-day discrepancies
Because of the way impressions and Active View are counted, it's possible in rare cases to see "Active View % viewable impressions" or "Active View % measurable impressions" as either a negative number or a number greater than 100%.
That's because of the way the metrics involved are counted. Eligibility is known at the time each impression is delivered, but additional code must be fired to let Campaign Manager 360 know whether the impression is viewable, or whether viewability can be measured. In some cases, an impression might become viewable a few minutes after it's served because the user has scrolled and brought the ad onto the screen.
This can result in discrepancies when an impression occurs at the end of a day. For example, an impression on an ad occurs at 11:59 PM on November 20 and is immediately recorded as eligible, but it doesn’t get measured and recorded as viewable by Active View until several minutes later, when it is already after midnight on November 21. If no other impressions occur for this ad, your reporting data will show an eligible impression for November 20 but no measurable or viewable impression, and a measurable and viewable impression for November 21 but no eligible impression.
In this example, you would see "Active View % measurable impressions" as a negative number (fewer than zero) for November 20 and as greater than 100% for November 21.
These discrepancies usually only affect a very small number of impressions.