'JIC' Releases Criteria For Certifying Ad Currencies, Issuing RFPs Soon

The sell-side initiative to create the first joint industry committee (JIC) in the U.S. moved another step closer to becoming an actual one – albeit operationally different than the way JICs function in most of the rest of the world – unveiling the criteria required for cross-media measurement services to become certified as currencies for buying and selling advertising.

It also disclosed a list of companies that participated in defining those baseline requirements (see below), and it does indeed represent a cross-section of media companies and ad agencies with a few notable exceptions (Disney, Havas, Stagwell, any specific advertisers).

The new baseline requirements are characterized as a starting point to get the process of certifying new multiple suppliers as trading currencies in time ad negotiations for the 2024 broadcast year, and a nonprofit, legal entity still needs to be put in place to overee the process, but the new minimum requirements can be read here, and broadly cover issues including:

  • advertisement

    advertisement

    Big Data

  • Technology and infrastructure

  • Interoperability

  • Privacy

  • Transparency

  • Governance and transaction flexibility

  • Cross-platform measurement

  • Cross-media transparency, media integrations and stewardship

The guidelines were characterized as a “living document” that will be refined over time, and the JIC’s new charter will allocate equal voting rights to members representing the buy and sell sides of the certification process.

Seven audience measurement suppliers – Comscore, iSpot, Nielsen, SambaTV, TVSquared, VideoAmp and 605 – have each been formally invited to participate in the certification process, which includes a provision requiring that each company should seek accreditation for industry self-regulatory watchdog, the Media Rating Council, as a condition of certification.

“In the next two weeks measurement companies will receive a more detailed [request for proposal],” said Brittany Slattery, CMO of OpenAP, which is leading the process in association with the Video Advertising Bureau.

“Upon receipt of the completed RFP, applications will then be brought to the JIC certification committee for review, at which point there will be a vote to approve a conditional certification,” she added, noting, “Once granted this conditional approval, there may be additional audit requests to verify parts of the submission before certification is granted.”

Companies participating in defining the criteria include:

  • Dentsu
  • GroupM
  • Horizon Media
  • IPG Mediabrands
  • Publicis Media
  • Omnicom Media Group
  • RPA
  • A+E Networks
  • AMC Networks
  • Fox
  • Hallmark Media
  • NBCUniversal
  • Paramount
  • Roku
  • TelevisaUnivision
  • Warner Bros Discovery
  • OpenAP
  • Video Advertising Bureau
2 comments about "'JIC' Releases Criteria For Certifying Ad Currencies, Issuing RFPs Soon".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 6, 2023 at 10:59 a.m.

    Joe, this is great---but hardly surprising coming from a huge committee.  What's missing, I fear, is "relevance". You can set up all of the rules you want---MRC accreditation, "big data", etc. but what about the value of the resulting information. Of course, measuring all of the screens with a large and "transparent" panel---or "sample"---is  the way to go. But what about measuring what's really important---whether anyone is "watching either program content or commercials? Which "baseline requirement" covers that?

  2. Tony Jarvis from Olympic Media Consultancy, March 6, 2023 at 5:18 p.m.

    As stated before: This entity is NOT a JIC in any way, Joe Mandese's revelation regarding the ownership of OpenAP, its role as a "supplier" and that is "managing" this "JIC" not withstanding.  It appears the farrago inside an imbroglio continues. 
    There can by defintion be only one trading currency, baseline or "truth set" for any major media which should ideally be comparable to and harmonize with the each of the single currencies established for each of the major media.  As Ed, John Grono and myself have consistently recommended, that baseline audience currency measure should prefereably be based on Eyes-On or Ears-On, a fundmantal pre-attentive measure.  Planners, Buyers and Sellers can, shouid and do have all sorts of marvellous insightful ancilliary data with which to refine and enhance their recommendations well beyond the currency and target audience CPM's (Completely Positively Mad!)
    So are Disney, Havas Media Group and other key players well out of this?  Stay tuned. 

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