Google struggles with accreditation for mobile web metrics

Dive Brief:

In September, the Media Ratings Council (MRC) suspended Google DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) accreditation for mobile web impression and viewability stats, but Google is working towards regaining accreditation according to MediaPost. Before the suspension, the MRC revoked Google’s accreditation in July.
The issue revolved around Google’s methodology when accounting for mobile ad impressions. In April the MRC, Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Mobile Marketing Association announced new guidelines that changed mobile ad impressions from “rendered” to “served.”
For Google’s part, the new guidelines required the tech giant to rebuild part of its advertising platform infrastructure and that process took several months, leading to the accreditation issues.

Dive Insight:

How ad impressions are tracked, particularly viewability standards defining what counts as a “viewed” ad, have long been an area of controversy in digital advertising. As new formats become available, marketers are not always sure how to measure performance while marketers, platforms and the organizations determining standards are all struggling to keep up with how the space is evolving. Mobile in particular is a challenge because the screen is so small and the use case is different from desktop.

Addressing its accreditation issue, Google said DFP users will be able to see the new download metrics by the end of the year, but that it wasn’t going to force publishers to use them until the tech giant has the chance to educate its publishers.

"We're talking about a major shift in the foundation of digital advertising,” a Google spokesperson told MediaPost.

Facebook has also come under fire for its viewability metrics, most recently for overestimating its video viewing metrics for two years, leading the The Association of National Advertisers to call for an audit of Facebook’s video metrics. For now Facebook has been able to operate without accreditation from the MRC, but this is likely to change. Major ad agency, Dentsu also admitted to overcharging some clients based on how it tracked ad impressions.