The Media Rating Council  issued a final version of its Cross-Media Audience Measurement Standards, setting forth provisions to guide the measurement of video advertising and content delivered through television, OTT and digital, including both desktop and mobile, and produced in collaboration with an industry working group of more than 175 companies and supported by the ANA, 4As and the IAB, which are founding member associations of the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative, as well as the Video Advertising Bureau. The final Standards come following a 60 day public comment period that began with issuance of a draft version of the Standards in March.

“With the release of these Standards, the industry now has clear path to produce cross platform metrics that will allow for greater analytical insights into video audiences, both within and across platforms, and to better facilitate cross platform advertising commerce,” noted George W. Ivie, Executive Director and CEO of the MRC.  “We believe this represents a major step forward, as well as a culmination of the 3MS initiative efforts that have led to it.”

Some of the provisions in the final Standards are:

• Viewable Impressions: For combined deduplicated cross-media video measurement, a viewability qualification threshold of 100% of pixels on screen for at least two continuous seconds must be utilized for both digital and linear components. Viewable impressions are the minimum required qualifying measurement unit for cross-media advertising Reach, Frequency and GRP.
• Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT) Filtration: Cross-media audience measurement must be based on filtration inclusive of General and Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (GIVT and SIVT, respectively).
• Duration: For audience measurement of any kind, including cross-media, average Viewable Duration reporting (based on unduplicated viewable duration) is required, with viewable completion audience metrics also required in cross-media video measurement. The Standard provides for flexibility in duration reporting based upon criteria such as actual and quartile.
• Consideration of Audio: Presence of audio must be considered in determining a Viewable Video Impression (and input into GRP) for cross-media video. Measurement organizations should separately report Viewable video duration that is also audible (non-mute or non-zero) where this can be measured.