The Media Rating Council (MRC) was born in the ’60s at the behest of Congress during a national media scandal involving TV game shows that rigged quiz results to boost their own ratings.
Fast-forward to 2023, and the MRC’s responsibility to foster fair measurement remains the same. But its techniques and methodologies have evolved, says Ron Pinelli, the MRC’s associate director and SVP of digital research and standards, speaking on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
“What we’re ultimately trying to provide is assurance that [measurement] services are valid, reliable and effective,” Pinelli says.
But TV’s digitization has introduced many new components the MRC now needs to consider when evaluating media measurement products – in particular, census-level viewership data.
The MRC has had to adapt its accreditation procedures to “keep up to pace with the data and technologies that measurement services are [using],” says Pinelli, pointing to big data and generative AI. One way the MRC is doing this is by working more directly with the engineers that perform the audits.
Ultimately, he says, the MRC needs to understand the inner workings of the data and technology being used to account for ad delivery. That is how it ensures services are dependable and following through on doing what they’ve promised to do.
Because accreditation isn’t one and done. The MRC has to keep an eye on the products it accredits to make sure they remain valid, reliable and effective.
But the organization’s methodology “is not foolproof,” Pinelli says.
Case in point: When Nielsen severely undercounted audiences during the pandemic, the MRC was forced to temporarily strip the company of its accreditation. And that’s the MRC’s process working as it should.
According to Pinelli, the MRC approaches audits in an “open and iterative” way that’s designed to control bias in media measurement through standardization and accreditation.
Also in this episode: A closer look at Nielsen’s and Amazon’s plan to measure Thursday Night Football, the limitations of panels in TV measurement, what determines the speed and cost of audits for MRC accreditation, where the MRC and the wider TV industry butt heads and how the org differs from the newly created joint industry committee of broadcasters.
For more articles featuring Ron Pinelli, click here.
