Media Rating Council

The Media Rating Council is a US organisation that has defined measurement standards for television, print, radio and digital media since the 1960s. Today the acronym MRC mostly stands for definitions around viewability, reach, fraud detection and measurement methodology in digital advertising. Advertisers and platforms align with these standards because they create a common measurement language.

What the MRC standards cover

The viewability rules are the best known: a display ad counts as viewable when at least fifty percent of its pixels are in the visible browser area for at least one second. Video uses similar rules with a two second duration. The MRC also defines how to count impressions, clicks and reach and how fraudulent activity must be filtered out.

Why advertisers should care

Ad platforms that measure to MRC standards produce more comparable reports. When you read reach or viewability claims in proposals, you should check whether the numbers were collected in an MRC compliant way. Without that reference the figures are hard to judge, because vendors can otherwise use their own definitions.

In day to day advertising

In day to day work it matters mostly in larger media plans to request MRC compliant measurement, for example through certified third party pixels. That makes viewability, reach and fraud rates comparable across platforms and helps justify budget decisions cleanly.