The Media Rating Council Tuesday afternoon announced it has revised its mobile in-app and mobile web measurement guidelines. The announcement, which was made in conjunction with the IAB Tech Lab and the Mobile Marketing Association, said the decision finalizes guidelines that were offered for public comment earlier this year, effectively making them the ad industry’s new standard for mobile advertising.
Twitter has agreed to submit to the Media Rating Council for accreditation consideration — all coming in the midst of plaguing issues regarding digital media measurement. The MRC says Twitter has agreed to submit a set of key measurement metrics — the first phase of the accreditation process.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google is committing to a series of audits for its web video powerhouse YouTube by the ad industry’s measurements watchdog, the Media Rating Council. Less than two weeks ago, Facebook also announced it had agreed to have some of its ad metrics audited by the MRC.
Building on comScore’s recent MRC accreditation for SIVT filtration, this new accreditation targets cross-platform campaign planning.
Exclusives
Facebook has pledged to undergo audits by the media industry’s measurement watchdog, the Media Rating Council, people familiar with the matter say, a move that will likely please ad-industry executives who are skeptical of the tech giant’s data-reporting practices.
The marketing industry’s Media Rating Council has held recent talks with Facebook about auditing its measurement methodologies, which have come under scrutiny following the company’s own admission that some of its numbers have been wrong.
The Media Rating Council, a self-regulatory industry body that oversees standards for media measurement, plans to issue guidelines on mobile viewability measurement by mid-June. The MRC aims to improve the quality of media measurement and provide greater utility for measurement overall.
In an important stamp of approval making comScore’s digital audience measurement more of an industry currency, the Media Rating Council voted to grant accreditation to comScore’s Media Metrix service. The service, which measures publisher website audiences based on comScore’s “unified digital measurement” method, is the first digital content audience measurement service accredited by the MRC.
Effective today, none of the demographic data reported by Nielsen’s local TV ratings services will be accredited. The move follows Nielsen’s decision to drop paper diaries for estimating the demographic composition of audiences in its local metered market ratings and to begin using new, as-yet-unaccredited methods for calculating who is watching television. As a result, media industry self-regulatory ratings watchdog the Media Rating Council announced Wednesday that none of Nielsen’s local demographic data will be accredited.
Amid growing concern over online advertising fraud, the Media Rating Council has issued new guidelines for digital media vendors and companies to follow in order to detect and filter out “invalid traffic” generated by non-human sources like bots.
Nielsen’s Code Reader Getting Mixed Reviews
As the October deadline by which Nielsen hopes to start rolling out its replacement for the paper diary nears, some broadcasters are upset. They say the initial results from the code reader system are giving them lower ratings and questionable demos. Meanwhile, the Media Rating Council is taking a hard look before giving the system its blessing.
ComScore, the media measurement and analytics firm, is the latest to receive accreditation from the Media Rating Council for video viewability technology. The company’s display ad viewability measurement tech had already been accredited by the MRC.
Following more than a year of extensive auditing of its TV audience measurement methods, the Media Rating Council has determined that Rentrak’s national and local TV ratings are not yet ready for primetime and will not receive accreditation. The MRC noted that it is not unusual for a complex ratings system not to pass its initial audit, and said Rentrak has indicated it plans to follow through on “remediation steps” recommended by the MRC and would comply with a new audit that would be necessary for the MRC to reconsider accreditation of the services.
Turner Broadcasting’s CNN, fusing efforts around in-home and out-of-home viewing, has received the blessing of the independent Media Rating Council. CNN’s viewing data of its special efforts, “CNN All Screen,” combines in-home and out-of-home TV viewing by “fusing” data from different samples — Nielsen’s National People Meter panel and local Portable People Meter (PPM) panels.
The Media Rating Council today is adopting a viewability metric, or “currency,” for online video ads that defines when viewable display impressions count. It’s the industry’s first attempt to address the problem of brands paying publishers for ads no one sees. While the industry generally welcomes the development, the fine print causes some concern.
The Media Rating Council recently lifted its 18-month-old advisory against selling digital ads based on whether they are measurably viewed by consumers. It’s a move that will likely reshape the $50 billion ad marketplace and pit publishers against brands, while putting in motion a surge in the number of online promotions sold on viewability metrics — pricing that functions on how frequently ads are seen by viewers.
For a very long time, media buyers and planners have been pushing for a gross ratings point, a way to compare online ad buys to those made in other media. That time is not yet here, but it’s getting closer. The Media Rating Council has lifted a ban on using viewable impressions as the currency for online buys, ending a moratorium established in November 2012.
Three years after the national TV advertising marketplace shifted to C3 ratings — live average commercial minute ratings plus three days playback viewing — the system was finally accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC). A year after that, the rest of the world found out. The lag time between the accreditation and its full disclosure raises many questions about transparency in the current ratings system, the role of the MRC and why Nielsen itself was so lackadaisical in confirming the news, earlier this year.
Nielsen said its new Online Campaign Ratings service — which looks to bring TV-style measurement to online advertising, including video — has received a stamp of approval from the Media Rating Council. Tabbed Online Campaign Ratings, Disney networks, Facebook, GroupM and Starcom MediaVest are among the clients using it. The system — which been in test for some time and was announced in September 2010 — hit the market Aug. 15, meaning that MRC accreditation largely parallels the launch.
Nielsen’s TV measurement service in Puerto Rico has received accreditation by the Media Rating Council following its April 2010 launch. Nielsen said the three principal stations in the U.S. territory and some agencies solicited it to launch a ratings service two years ago.
The Devaluing of Nielsen’s Diary Currency
The Media Rating Council’s revocation of its accreditation of Nielsen’s NSI diary ratings last month didn’t surprise many in the industry who have complained about the paper-based system. And while Nielsen says it’s fixed the problem, getting reaccredited takes time. So by the time the February ratings books go out, Nielsen (and its clients) may still be hanging out on a limb.
The Media Rating Council has revoked its accreditation for Nielsen’s 154 diary-only local TV market reports, effective with the 2009 audit period.
