By: Troy Dreier, MediaPost
Viewability continues to be an important issue for video advertisers. How do you know that your ads are being shown where they’ll be seen? And how do you that the impression metrics you’re seeing reflect actual views by humans that could become customers?

As video publishers and advertising companies attempt to make online video a challenger to TV, they know that they need to provide concrete answers on viewability. Luckily, standards may be on the way.

Speaking at the recent IAB Annual Leadership meeting, David Cohen, chief investment officer for media planning agency Universal McCann, said that some advertisers aren’t getting what they’re paying for.

“There’s a good bit of nefarious activity that’s going on out in the world in both display and video,” Cohen said. “It’s a pretty big problem, whether that’s fraud that’s perpetuated by robots or non-human activity or piracy or privacy concerns. There’s definitely a lot of stuff going on there. We’re very, very vocal in the space to try to make it a clean, bright, well-lit environment for marketers and advertisers.”

The goal of viewability measurements and standards is to let advertisers feel confident with online video advertising.

“We’re measuring all impressions that we’re putting out into the marketplace and also measuring those that are viewable. Our desire with publishers is to only pay for those that 100 percent in-view,” Cohen said. “The industry is not quite there yet.”

So when are we going to see a set of standards put in place? While it’s hard to say exactly, Cohen thinks that it will be sooner rather than later.

“We think that 2014 is going to be the year that we roll out viewable metrics, and pay based on our ability to see ads,” Cohen concluded.