• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, June 25, 2014

Yahoo on Wednesday announced the rollout of its Media Rating Council (MRC)-accredited viewability measurement solution called Prime View. Through the new service, advertisers can ensure that they only pay for display ads people can actually see.

“We know that advertisers want to be confident their message is reaching consumers, so Yahoo’s vCPM offering assures advertisers only pay for viewable impressions and helps increase campaign performance,” stated Scott Burke, senior vice president, advertising and data platforms at Yahoo, in a blog post today.

Yahoo Prime is able to tell whether at least half of an ad appears in the viewable portion of a browser page for at least one second -- a “viewable impression.” That means Yahoo can now guarantee display campaigns will run with a “100 viewability rate” on the Web portal.

The company said the MRC accreditation is aligned with the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s standard for display ad viewability measurement. Google in April announced receiving MRC accreditation for its viewability tracking tool called Active View. But Yahoo today claimed it is the largest publisher thus far to receive the MRC’s imprimatur.

After initially launching Prime View in the U.S., Yahoo plans to extend the functionality globally.