On Tuesday, Google announced that the Media Rating Council (MRC), the media industry’s measurement monitor, will be auditing YouTube’s video viewability measurement integrations for accreditation. Also, Google is seeking metrics accredidation for video ads bough through its ad-buying platforms, AdWords and DoubleClick Bid Manager
This announcement was first reported by the The Wall Street Journal, and from this report we know that the MRC will audit the data collection and measurement practices of the three third-party companies that are already integrated with YouTube. These companies are DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Sicence and MOAT. According to Google, it initiated the audit process and that YouTube will be the first platform to go through a third-party integration audit. The audit will be encompassing every aspect of how these three companies collect, analyze and report viewability data on YouTube.com and YouTube apps
This is from the announcement:
The audit will validate that data collection, aggregation and reporting for served video impressions, viewable impressions, related viewability statistics and General Invalid Traffic (GIVT) across desktop and mobile for each integration adheres to MRC and IAB standards.
Something else that the MRC is going to audit is video impression and viewability data and GIVT detection for display and video ads purchased on YouTube and non-Google sites through AdWords and Double Click Bind Manager. It was announced that they now have received MRC vieability accreditation for video impressions and vieability metrics in DoubleClick Campaign Manager. For years now, Google and Facebook have been pushed by advertisers for independent auditing. MRC auditing measures earlier this month after they announced multiple errors in its self-reported metrics last year. According to Babak Pahlavan of Google, said that Google’s latest work with the MRC was not a reaction to Facebook’s adoption of MRC inspection.
Because of Facebook’s errors, advertisers have been more vocal in their calls for transparency, as ad fraud concerns peaked again with the report of the ad fraud botnet, Methbot, in December, and supply-chain trust issues stemming from an ANA report released last summer.