MRC 'Modernizes' 5-Year-Old Invalid Traffic Standards To Account For New Forms Of Ad Fraud

The Media Rating Council (MRC) this morning officially released new standards intended to “modernize” how the advertising and media industry manage a key component of digital ad fraud: so-called “invalid traffic,” or IVT.

The update is an addendum to the MRC’s “Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Guidelines,” which were originally …

1 comment about "MRC 'Modernizes' 5-Year-Old Invalid Traffic Standards To Account For New Forms Of Ad Fraud".
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  1. Craig Jaffe from Baruch College, Zicklin School of Business, June 25, 2020 at 12:11 p.m.

    Joe, thank you for your report, but I would like to suggest a correction to your sentence in the fifth paragraph which currently states:

    "While the guidelines are highly technical, they essentially set an industry standard for determining if and when digital traffic used as the basis for ad impressions is non-human and illegitimate, often because of some devious technology such as spiders, bots or another mechanism is used to fraudulently represent real people."

    I encourage you to make sure your readers know the phrase "essentially set" should be understood as "set essential industry standards." It's important readers of this article understand the distinction. In this case, the standards are not just good to know concepts. The standards are mandatory protocols for entities who seek accreditation.

    Let's use your company, Mediapost, as an example. At some point, I imagine you will be interested in learning the metrics associated with the all of the paid advertising campaigns that have run on Mediapost. For example, you will probably want to know how many impressions did the advertising campaigns generate, and so on. The entities you work with who are responsible for collecting, processing, and reporting those metrics are held accountable, meaning that whatever metrics are reported, the responsible entities should have handled the data in the most valid, reliable, and effective manner. If not, then the metrics shared with you and your advertisers are suspect. However, if standards are met, then the metrics shared with you and your advertisers are regarded as being approved by our industry. As you are a business owner, I encourage you to consider the best practice of only working with entities that have passed their respective audits and are accredited.

    I very much enjoyed your article. Thank you for letting our industry know of these important developments.

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