The Media Rating Council on Wednesday released its final version of its standards on Outcomes Measurement and Data Quality.
The document is the end result of a project led by MRC that included a working group representing over 100 organizations from across the advertising and media industries, with the endorsement of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the 4A’s, and the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA).
The Standards address various Outcomes measures and approaches, including attribution and Multi-Touch Attribution, Market Mix Modeling, and experiments, as well as the underlying data quality associated with these methods. The release follows a public comment period on a draft version of the document that occurred over the summer. Feedback from comments received was considered, and, in certain instances, incorporated, although the substance of the final version does not differ significantly from the earlier draft, the MRC says.
Among the key provisions:
• Outcomes analyzed, associated or attributed to media and advertising activities should be
relevant, logical and aligned with user goals, while supported by consistent definitions
and approaches;
• Intent must be directly observable or inferred based on behavior using empirically
supported approaches
• Interactions with ads and content must be clearly defined and empirically supported
• A base of viewable impressions is required as an option for attribution of Outcomes;
SIVT filtration is also required
• The source and nature of datasets must be generally disclosed to users along with details
of collection parameters, editing and cleaning applied as well as known biases or
limitations associated to it
• Care must be taken to properly disclose the methodology for measuring and reporting
ROI and ROAS and inferences associated with them
• These Standards encourage Cross-Media coverage for measurement of ad and media
exposure, but do not require all measures of Outcomes to include Cross-Media
measurement
• Viewability should not be used to imply presence of a user or that an ad has been
viewed/seen
• Outcomes measurement providers should consider Advertising Exposure or contact by
the consumer as well as their Attention or impact for any audience if causality is to be
assessed
• Single-touch attribution use cases are generally limited to a specific campaign
objective/product type
• The process and support for determining which exposures are attributed and the weights
or values assigned to them must be robust and demonstrable for audit purposes of MTA
methodologies
• The results of RCT exercises and non-experimental methodologies must be treated as
estimates and must adhere to statistical and sample-based requirements of the MRC
Minimum Standards
“These standards represent the realization of a new and critical phase of a long-term effort by MRC, in cooperation with other industry trade associations, to enhance advertising
measurement,” MRC Executive Director and CEO George W. Ivie remarked. “This initiative began more than a decade ago with projects designed to standardize measures of ad delivery, and has now progressed to the measurement of business outcomes that are associated with ad exposure.”
ANA Group EVP Bill Tucker commented, “With marketers increasingly looking to outcomes as the primary determinant of ad spend effectiveness, it is critical that the industry has a clear set of standards against which providers of attribution measurement can be assessed,” said ANA Group EVP Bill Tucker. “Of particular importance, these Standards were developed in conjunction with marketers, ensuring that they represent and address our needs. ANA members have called for the development of outcome standards as an industry priority, and we are pleased to have supported and participated in this significant endeavor.”
Ashwini Karandikar, EVP of Media, Tech and Data for the 4A’s, added, “With commercial performance and outcome-based compensation models becoming more mainstream, the creation of these standards offers a roadmap for the requirements around data collection for advertisers and marketers. This framework is an important baseline because it enables independent, validated data to be more consistently measured and connected to outcomes.”
The Standards can be found at www.mediaratingcouncil.org.
