MRC’s Viewability Standards Treats Mobile Ads the Same as Desktop

Almost a year after it started the process of measuring mobile viewability, the Media Rating Council has issued its first set of guidelines, which recommend that marketers treat smartphone and desktop ads the same.

Per the media watchdog, a viewable impression means marketers will only be charged after 50 percent of a mobile ad loads in one second. For video ads, it’s two seconds. Those are the same standards that apply to desktop. The draft version of the guidelines are open for public discussion until April 30 when the MRC will take the feedback and create a final set of guidelines for advertisers.

The decision to measure both types of ads the same way isn’t entirely surprising. The guidelines also fail to address news feed-style ads that run in apps like Facebook and Twitter, where a majority of mobile ads are viewed.

“As of today, MRC has not concluded that different thresholds are necessary,” said the trade organization in a statement, noting that it is still working to understand how content is consumed in news feeds.

The differences between desktop and mobile viewability may be few, but there are some.

Whether the mobile guidelines ultimately shape up to be much different from desktop remains to be seen, but it will be intriguing to watch.

Source: Ad Week

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