A new report by Meetrics has put UK ad viewability at 52% in Q3 – up from 49% in Q2.

The European ad verification company’s report shows that now the percentage of ads served in the UK meet the IAB and Media Rating Council’s recommendation of an ad being considered viewable, which is when 50% of the ad is in view for at least one second.

However, the UK is still lagging behind Germany at 61% and France at 69%.

The report also shows that half-page ads are the most viewable format at 72%, followed by billboards at 67%, with leaderboards the least viewable at 40%. The average time viewable ads were in view rose from 29.5 seconds in Q2 to 31.2 seconds in Q3.

“Viewability levels are, at last, heading in the right direction as the industry increasingly gets to grips with the issue but there’s still a long way to go,” said Meetrics director of international business Anant Joshi. “Based on the IAB’s latest digital ad spend report, our data suggests about £260m was wasted in the UK in Q3 on unseen ads – equivalent to over £1bn a year.”

According to Joshi, the main reason ads aren’t viewable is down to them taking too long to load, with about one in five not having loaded before the viewer navigates away.

“Consequently, the industry has much to do in terms of increasing web-page performance and ad serving systems,” added Joshi, “notably, to drastically reduce the amount of web browser redirects that go on behind the scenes before content is loaded.