VideoAmp, Nielsen One Pull Out Of MRC Accreditation Process

by Joe Mandese , Yesterday

In moves that have implications for both the "alternative" ad currency marketplace, as well as cross-media measurement, VideoAmp and Nielsen One have pulled out of the Media Rating Council's accreditation process.

Details of the respective reasons were not available at presstime, but were disclosed as one of the MRC's quarterly accreditation status updates, which included a number of new accreditation grants and continuations for other media measurement and platform providers.

VideoAmp, which has been certified by the U.S. joint industry committee organized by OpenAP, originally completed pre-audit on 7/11/24. Removed from in-process status due to VideoAmp’s lack of intent to continue the audit, resulting in the withdrawal from the accreditation process, it has been vying with Comscore and iSpot to be used as alternatives to Nielsen audience measurement for various suppliers, agencies and advertisers.

It completed its "pre-audit" as part of the MRC accreditation process in July 2024, but was described in the update as being "removed from in-process status due to [its] lack of intent to continue the audit."

VideoAmp's pullout follows Comscore's MRC accreditation grant in March. It's unclear whether iSpot has or plans to seek MRC accreditation as an audience-measurement currency, but it was granted MRC accreditation in 2025 for its "occurrence" data.

A marketplace assessment commissioned by the Advertising Research Foundation's Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement early this year estimates the U.S. advertising marketplace can only support two market currencies, but did not imply which two might survive.

Nielsen, meanwhile, continues to champion its "Nielsen One" cross-media measurement service as the industry standard, but faces new competition from the Association of National Advertisers' fledgling Aquila service, which is backed by ANA member advertisers, as well as the major digital advertising platforms (Amazon, Google, Meta, TikTok) and iHeartMedia.

While Aquila is not intended to be used as a marketplace currency for buying and selling advertising across linear and digital platforms, it intends be a truthset for measuring the reach and frequency of ads running across platforms.

Nielsen, which received a pre-audit review by the MRC in July 2025, has been "removed from in-process due to service withdrawal from the accreditation process," according to the MRC update.

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2 comments about "VideoAmp, Nielsen One Pull Out Of MRC Accreditation Process".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, July 13, 2026 at 2:29 p.m.
Joe, I dopn't know why we keep calling the so-called "alternative currencies" competition to Nielsen. They were never intended to be that and the ANA's Aquila service is also supposedly not competing to be the single standard "audience" measurement service, either. . Whether that ends up being Nielsen's service remains to be seen--though barring a collosal screw up--- it seems that Nielsen is the likely winner in this regard.

As regards the finding that the national TV industry can support only two standard rating services, it's extremely unlikely that this is what the sellers who rule desire. They would have to fund both competing services at considerable expense for two years or longer before feeling safer with one or the other. And then we'd be back to one.

What the sellers really want is a single, standard "audience" source that scrounges up every last tiny bit of "viewing" on any device, anywhere, any time ,so they can charge advertisers more--and I can't blame them for that. But it's up to the other side to be wary of these machinations as we were in olden times.

As I have said before, if the industry--not just the sellers---was serious about this it would get together, review the evidence and the capabilities of the various research companies and decide if one or more of the proposed "outcomes"--in addition to "audience"---will produce actionable results. These would then be standardized. Alll of the players--buyers and sellers ---would get such data for all sellers and all ad-supported content, along with the "viewing" data, instead of allowing each seller to pick only those "alternative currencies" that are favorable to it.

It's simple. national TV time buying and selling involves comparisons between one seller's wares and all others. Without standard information--the same for everybody--like it or not--the system can't work.
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Tony Jarvis from Olympic Media Consultancy, July 13, 2026 at 7:05 p.m.

Spot on as usual Ed!
When advertisers and "genuine" quality content providers listen seriously to Ed Papazian, who virtlually always "gets it right" plus their media agency research directors (some at least, and certainly the IPA, UK!), they will stop being hood-winked by the technopolies and their data walled gardens plus all this "alternative ad currency" nonsense, via the highly conflict-of-interest OpenAP that still masquerades as a JIC, on a variety of dubious media metrics that potentially misdirect truly effective media investments whether for ad campaigns or content development.
I respectfully suggest that Aquila and its use of the technopolies' driven,"revised" and false defintion of impressions or opportunites-to-see, is a disservice to the entire industry. Even as a "Commercial Goverance Tool" Aquila is also unfortunately weak as a result of the many scientific flaws across the various stages of the highly complex data integration and calibration processes and the resulting, so called, "reach & frequency" metrics - not to be confused with Reach and Frequency metrics of the past that had real value!
FYI: I am a member of the WFA's HALO Industry Technical Advisory Group, HITAG so have attempted to understand the various constructs of HALO and its offspring, Aquila via ANA, US and ORIGIN via ISBA, UK as welll as, and most importantly, the companies significantly influencing the HALO model!