Dive Brief:
- The Media Rating Council (MRC) released its Digital Audience-Based Measurement Standards, guidelines meant to enhance viewable impression measurement and invalid traffic filtration requirements, per a press release.
- The standards introduce duration weighting for digital video ads, a concept that will be applied to the coming cross-media standards to better equalize time spent with digital video in a cross-media environment.
- The new standards represent a “formative point of transition” in digital advertising in providing clear guidance for measuring digital audiences as well as creating a foundation for cross-media standards, said George W. Ivie, CEO and executive director of the MRC, in a statement.
Dive Insight:
The new standards define practices around assigning audience characteristics to impression-level data and include two key developments that marketers should be aware of. One is duration weighting for digital video ads, which holds the promise of providing a better understanding of digital viewing in a cross-media environment. However, the several trade groups working with MRC on developing the standards, cautioned marketers in a statement not to make buyer/seller decisions based on duration weighted measures until a consensus has been reached on implementation.
The other big development is a move to mandate Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT) filtration, which requires more rigor than General Invalid Traffic (GIVT), which is the standard today, because it includes more difficult to detect situations to analyze and identify.
The Digital Audience-Based Measurement Standards is part of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative, a joint industry effort supported by the ANA, 4As and IAB, and includes a one-year grace period for compliance. The next stage of MRC’s standards work is developing cross-media measurement standards, which are expected to be released sometime next year, according to the release.
The creation and adoption of industry-wide measurement standards across a wide range of digital advertising from viewability to the new audience measurements to the coming cross-media standards has become more critical as digital advertising has grown to become the dominant force in ad spending. Brands and marketers, particularly some of the largest global advertisers such as P&G, have begun demanding the transparency industry-wide standards offer.
The new Digital Audience-Based Measurement Standards have a number of key aspects highlighted in the press release including: using viewable impression as the foundational measurement for including a digital ad exposure in an audience-based metric calculation, such as a Gross Rating Point (GRP) for example; approaches for attributing audience characteristics to impression-level data including panels, census data collection techniques and third-party large data sets; and the introduction of duration weighting for digital video ads, a concept which will be applied in the coming cross-media standards.