What is View Through Rate?
View Through Rate (or VTR) is an advertising metric describing the number of times an ad has been viewed completely. It’s usually used for video advertisements, in which View Through Rate signifies the number of viewers who’ve watched the video ad through to completion out of all the people who’ve been served with the ad.
Even though View Through Rate is native to video advertising, it can also be used for standard ads which contain animations. An ad can be considered viewed through if the users didn’t skip or close it, or close the browser before the ad played out.
View Through Rate as a metric can also be significant for tracking the viewer’s post-exposure behavior, as opposed to their immediate post-ad response. This can be done through ad tracking and integration with the cookies placed on ad and conversion pages.
As a metric purely tracking the number of times a video ad has been viewed through to completion, it can be paradoxical if the ad’s goal is to have the viewer click on it. In this case, advertisers are at a more significant benefit than publishers, which is why it’s important to integrated CTR (Click-Through Rate) with View Through Rate.
The formula for View Through Rate is:
View Through Rate = Complete views (user did not skip) / Impressions (ad rendered)
