According to the study, advertising in quality digital environments is 98% more likely to be placed fully above the fold than adverts on non-premium sites. Such placements also resulted in average uplifts for brand awareness ( 11%), ad recall ( 19%), brand perception ( 10%) and recommendation intent ( 10%).

Quality digital environments were defined as websites where consumers have a stronger affinity with the brand, such as newsbrand publishers or sports websites.

Ads appearing on quality websites are over 58% more likely to be 100% in view for at least five seconds, according to the study, which also found that 48% of ads on the open exchange were never seen. Ads must be 50% in view for at least one second to be deemed viewable according to online industry standards.

The two companies will now use the findings from the research to build an industry-wide quality exposure factor for programmatic buying.

Vanessa Clifford, chief executive at Newsworks, said: “For years now, digital advertising has been used as a catch-all term in our industry, encompassing a myriad range of contexts. Now we have the insight to differentiate the value of a high-quality placements – such as on a newsbrand website – from general free browsing. This marks a huge step in our ongoing effectiveness programme and, working with GroupM, our aim is to make this work an actionable part of the online buying process for advertisers.”

The research, covering 394 million impressions in 84 campaigns and over 28,000 survey responses, ran between September 2017 and June 2018. Meetrics collected viewability and user engagement data for the campaign impressions and Cint distributed brand tracking surveys to panellists exposed to the campaigns.