Publishers and advertisers are always trying to find a way to make viewability a factor with their ads, to the point that they re not obtrusive, but still effective. However, some startup sites believe that the solution isn t advertising for the site, but rather the site itself.

AdWeek reports that a number of startup-oriented news sites are working on web designs that actually cater to advertising, instead of having to work around it. One example is LittleThings, a viral news site that targets a female demographic. It s been popular thus far, with 36.3 million unique visitors, up from 8.5 million the previous year. It s one of the sites that intends to introduce a new ad-friendly design of its website later in the year. “Because we’re only a year old, we have the benefit of seeing the challenges and the mistakes that others have made,” explained Gretchen Tibbits, LittleThings COO. “We were able to fill in some [holes] from day one.”

With this program, the idea is to give advertisers better date when it comes to have effective a campaign is with an audience. Newsfeed style ads will be able to fit in-between article paragraphs, and advertisers would pay dependent on how the entire piece of creative would be in view. Preroll and branded video would be utilized to an extent as well, with advertisers paying something similar depending on viewability.

However, it s not an entirely effective solution, as there s a hurdle with mobile devices. 80 percent of site traffic comes from the likes of smartphones and tablets, and with data-tracking cookies removing ads and smaller screens, viewability could be troublesome. “Because mobile experiences are tightly controlled with cookies, it makes the problem technically extremely difficult to solve,” said Andrew Frank, an analyst at Gartner.

Forrester Research senior analyst Susan Bidel added that even though some marketers have overcome the first round of issues with advertising, “any new publisher should expect that advertisers are going to insist on 100 percent viewability,” she explained. “If the publisher cannot deliver 100 percent viewability, the advertiser will pay for only viewable ads.”

So now it s just a matter of finding a solution. We ll see how it pans out over the next few months.