The ANA, the IAB, and their respective boards, joined by the 4A’s, and the 4A’s Media Leadership Council, fully support the work of the MRC, and want to highlight the latest guidance developed by the MRC, “The Viewable Impression: Capturing the ‘Opportunity to See’ and the First Step to an Audience-Based Digital Currency.” Written by George Ivie, CEO and executive director of the MRC and published in Media Daily News on March 23, 2015, the article explicitly calls out:
- The importance of the viewable impression standard to the ongoing development of comparable cross-media platform metrics
- An explanation of why the standard is written to capture an exposure, an “Opportunity to See,” and not branding impact or engagement
- A detailed explanation of the methodology and rationale for the minimum viewability standard
- Explanation of why the standard is needed for the development of the digital GRP, which is required for counting across electronic media
- A brief status report on the ongoing reconciliation efforts to align measurement vendor viewability results more closely
It has been one year since the MRC lifted its advisory on display viewability, and tremendous forward progress has been made. We urge all members of all three associations to become familiar with this latest document from the MRC and to support our cross-ecosystem efforts to improve measurement.
One of our biggest 3MS accomplishments is the ongoing support of the MRC as the media-agnostic standards-setting body and the release of the viewable impression standard that took many hours and months of our members’ and the MRC’s time. Collectively, we are committed to measurement transformation.
The ecosystem has agreed on a definition of an exposure—specifically, that it is a viewable impression. We have established that the core unit must incorporate a minimum of pixels in view for a minimum duration so that we can set a minimum opportunity to see in order to build the digital GRP. This is the critical next step in the 3MS plan, which has been agreed to by the industry.
All parties in a free market expect negotiation. In the complex media and technology world we inhabit, the best way to do business is by collectively reducing supply chain friction so that transactions are less complex. The best way to do this is to have standards. Absent standards, efficiencies of cost and scale break down.
As the op-ed written by Mr. Ivie explains:
“It is likely that buyers and sellers will negotiate more demanding conditions that include additive criteria for viewable ads that represent engagement and/or serve to increase the likelihood that the viewer received the brand’s message. These situations are dependent on factors such as creative design, the viewer’s persistence in remaining with the ad, the publisher’s content around the ad, ad clutter, and the quality of the ad creative itself.
“All of these elements are well beyond the scope of the Viewable Impression. They can be highly variable (based on the ad strategy, brand purpose, organization of the ad, ad message, etc.) and are significantly difficult to standardize. Creating a standard measurement for the effectiveness of a digital advertisement has never been the objective of the Viewable Impression guideline project.”
The full text of Mr. Ivie’s letter is here.
To date, we have invested $6 million to fund 3MS and get us to where we are. We are engaged in making a market move better and faster and with greater transparency. Measurement transformation must be completed. We urge all parties to support the MRC’s minimum standard for a viewable impression and to continue the hard work of Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS).
