MRC's mobile viewability measurement guidelines due mid-June
The US Media Rating Council (MRC) intends to issue guidelines on mobile viewability measurements in mid-June, benefiting its role as a regulatory industry authority overseeing digital media measurement standards. The body is keen to improve media measurement quality to make mobile environments more usable for consumers whose experience is affected by content viewability, for example, in-feed advertising, scrolling and page loading speeds. The MRC is focussing on how long pages take to load within a mobile environment compared to other platforms and whether the consumer's exposure to ads varies between devices.

by Tobi Elkin @tobielkin, May 27, 2016

The Media Rating Council (MRC), 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.

The forthcoming standards will aim to create a working measurement for viewability in mobile environments. They will focus on such issues as pages that take longer to load onto a screen in mobile environments, how consumers’ exposure to advertising is different when they experience it in-feed, and how consumers interact with the mobile scroll. All of these factors and more affect viewability standards, according to David Gunzerath, SVP and associate director, MRC.

The MRC has been working on viewability issues for a while and developed standards on viewability guidelines in 2014. Its collaboration with the Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Interactive Advertising Bureau on the “Making Measurement Make Sense” (3MS) initiative attempted to create a measurement environment that’s more conducive to brand advertising.

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The MRC also aims to create guidelines for measuring digital-audience-based currency. “Digital media isn’t there yet,” Gunzerath said. “We’re trying to create principles for digital media. TV measurement is already segmented by audience. Digital is still being monetized largely on the basis of gross impressions--at least for brand advertisers--that aren’t segmented on any consistent basis.” The MRC anticipates issuing a call for public comment on the digital piece later this year.

“Viewability offers the foundation to enable us to do the audience currency piece of of our work. We had to establish viewability first and whether impressions were served to a human being or not,” he said. “Viewability serves as the basis for contributing to a GRP calculation, which will happen when we issue the digital audience-based guidelines later this year.”

In addition, in 2017, the MRC expects to have cross-platform measurement guidelines in place. That will involve determining GRPs based on reach and frequency within and across platforms, but won’t be limited to traditional age and gender GRPs. “Our goal is to create a common platform for cross-platform measurement,” Gunzerath said.