Dive Brief:

• For the past three years, the Media Rating Council (MRC) viewability standard for digital display ads has been that if one half of the pixels are displayed for at least one second that counts as a view. This could soon change as the industry group is considering changing the standard to require that 100% of pixels have to be displayed to count as a viewed ad, per Ad Age.
• Such a change would bring the industry standard more in line with the requirements of brands like Unilever and agencies like GroupM that hold currently digital platforms to a stricter standard.
• The MRC constantly reviews its measurement standards, and while not willing to announce any imminent changes it is going to take a look at the digital viewability standard as part of a cross-media audience measurement project this year, according to the group's Senior VP David Gunzerath in the Ad Age report.

Dive Insight:

Viewability standards have long been an issue in digital advertising with no real consistency, making it difficult for brands and their partners to gather consistent performance measurements for their ads, a necessity for determining the return on ad spend. Even though the MRC standards are considered the de facto industry standards, ad buyers like Unilever and GroupM have held ad platforms to their own higher standards, and some platforms such as Facebook have offered their own standards that in some cases were even less stringent than the MRC standards.

The conversation around viewability took on much greater significance in January at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting where P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard laid down a challenge and threat to the CPG giant’s digital ad partners demanding more transparency, a cleaner media supply chain and notably that digital ad platforms had until the end of the year to get MRC accredited third-party viewability measurement or would lose P&G’s substantial ad business.

Whether the MRC makes an official change to its standards, pressure from big ad spenders like P&G, Unilever and GroupM are leading to publishers voluntarily adopting stricter viewability standards. If MRC does not move to a stricter standard, it risks appearing out of step with the direction that industry is going.