• by Joe Mandese , June 8, 2022

In an important step toward the development of industry stands for both data quality, as well as so-called "outcomes" based data measurement, the Media Rating Council (MRC) this morning released a draft of its initial framework for public comment.

The proposed standards cover many outcomes measures and approaches routinely used by the advertising and media industry to represent the impact of advertising and media exposures, including attribution and multi-touch attribution (MTA), marketing-mix modeling (MMM) and experiments, as well as underlying data quality associated with these methods.

The outcomes standards initiative was originally announced in June 2020, with preliminary guidance issued in March of 2021, and the new draft is open for public comment for 60 days.

Key provisions include:

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  Guidance and requirements related to incorporating viewability, invalid traffic (IVT) filtration and audience measures into media and ad exposure attributed to outcomes, building on previous MRC Standards;

• Definitions and requirements for “funnel” metrics from interaction, engagement, direct outcomes and efficiency metrics;

• Requirements for attribution approaches including MTA, such as decay curves, regression approaches, determining weight or value and lookback windows;

• Requirements for MMM approaches, such as coverage, spend data, modeling parameters and external/environmental factors;

• Requirements related to use of "test and control" approaches or experiments as validation, in combination or hybrid approaches and on a standalone basis;

• Detailed guidance and requirements for underlying data quality, including identification and key privacy considerations.

The full draft can be accessed at www.mediaratingcouncil.org.