Measurement · also called Media Rating Council
MRC (Media Rating Council)
The MRC (Media Rating Council) is a US non-profit industry body that sets measurement standards and audits and accredits media measurement services, including viewability and invalid-traffic filtering.
The Media Rating Council was founded in the 1960s, after US congressional hearings into the reliability of TV and radio ratings. Its job is to make sure that the numbers used to buy and sell media are trustworthy. Its members include broadcasters, publishers, advertisers, agencies and ad tech companies.
The MRC does two main things. It writes or co-writes standards, including the viewable impression guidelines with the IAB, the invalid traffic guidelines, cross-media audience measurement standards and outcomes and brand safety guidance. And it runs MRC accreditation: independent auditors examine a measurement service in depth, and if it complies, the MRC accredits specific metrics.
Accreditation is metric-specific: a vendor can be accredited for display viewability in desktop browsers but not for SIVT in CTV. That detail matters when comparing vendors. While the MRC is US-based, its standards are widely used globally as the reference for viewability and IVT.
Think of it like this
The MRC is like an independent weights-and-measures inspector checking that every shop's scales are honest.
An example
An advertiser in Singapore compares two verification vendors and asks each for its MRC accreditation letter; one is accredited for SIVT in mobile apps and CTV, the other only for GIVT in desktop web.
Related terms
MRC accreditation
MRC accreditation is the Media Rating Council's formal approval, after an independent audit, that a measurement service's specific metrics comply with industry standards.
MRC IVT guidelines
The MRC IVT guidelines are the Media Rating Council's standards for detecting and filtering invalid traffic in ad measurement, defining the GIVT and SIVT categories that accredited measurers must handle.
Viewability
Viewability measures whether an ad actually had a chance to be seen on screen; the MRC standard is 50% of pixels in view for one second (display) or two seconds (video).
Ad verification
Ad verification is independent third-party measurement that checks whether ads were served to real people, in viewable positions, in safe and suitable environments, and in the intended geographies.
IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau)
The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) is the US-based trade association for the digital advertising and media industry, founded in 1996, which publishes research, guidelines and policy positions.
Sources: Media Rating Council, MRC standards and guidelines, MRC accreditation