• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 31, 2017

The Media Rating Council (MRC) Tuesday afternoon announced it has revised its mobile in-app and mobile web measurement guidelines in conjunction with the IAB Tech Lab and the Mobile Marketing Association.

The decision finalizes guidelines that were offered for public comment earlier this year, effectively making them the ad industry’s new standard for mobile advertising.

The revised guidelines call for ad impressions to start being counted with a “count-on-begin-to-render” minimum, which the MRC said occurs later in the ad-serving process than previous guidelines allowed. However, it did not state explicitly when that occurs.

“Accordingly, references to ‘served’ impressions have been removed from these updates,” the MRC said in a statement, adding: “The change better aligns measurement with the counting model in place for viewable impressions, as it sets as a foundation those impressions that have rendered and therefore have the potential to be viewable impressions.”

The initial draft of the MRC’s mobile ad measurement recommendations required that ads rendered in mobile apps must be fully loaded before they can be considered viewable ad impressions.

In a related move, the MRC and the IAB Tech Lab also updated their digital video ad impression measurement guidelines. They did not say explicitly what the updates are, but posted a 25-page document and said the update would be available for a 30-day public comment period, ending Nov. 30.