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For the past year, the topics of fraud and viewability have dominated advertising industry headlines, research and happy hour musings. And while most discussion has centred on fairly nuanced aspects like standards and measurement capabilities, a critical component has gone largely overlooked: fraud and viewability are two different things. Grouping these two distinct phenomena together as a single entity neglects not only recent technological advancements in measurement and prevention, but also threatens to actually create more waste.

The thinking goes: “If viewability is about making sure that my ad had the chance to be seen, and fraud is about making sure that my ads are being shown to real humans, then can’t we just combine the two?” Unfortunately it’s not that easy. That’s because fraudulent inventory – or ads that aren’t shown to real people – can have excellent viewability rates.

Through a technique called “ad stacking,” nefarious characters can place ads on top of one another, and make it appear as though multiple ads are appearing above-the-fold or in a large player size, when in fact only a single ad is actually visible to the viewer. As a result, advertisers who are optimizing only towards viewability can end up with highly viewable ads that are never seen by a real person.

The distinction is important because the technology now exists for advertisers to understand why their ads aren’t seen. Newly developed fraud verification – like Integral Ad Science’s Bid Expert – can help ensure there’s a real person on the other side of the screen and then give advertisers the metrics they need to optimize for high viewability.

It’s worth noting that, at least as far as video is concerned, neither fraud nor viewability are nearly as big of an issue in mobile environments. Nearly all the video viewing executions on tablets and smartphones expand to full-screen, and existing technical infrastructure does not allow for multiple players at once – eliminating the ability for ad stacking.

Bear in mind that we can never guarantee 100% viewability – some people will inevitably ignore ads. But by working with partners that provide advertisers the ability to purchase media themselves, marketers can begin to see exactly how much it costs to ensure that real people are seeing their ads and how much more it costs to ensure that those ads appear in high-quality environments. This level of transparency helps both advertisers as well as publishers, who can often feel like they’re getting the short end of the viewability deal.

Be sure to check out the ACA’s Executive Forum in June if you’d like to learn more about viewability, fraud, transparency and verification.

Robert Meth is Head of Enterprise Sales, TubeMogul