ISpot gets MRC accreditation for its ad catalog, in possible step toward broader audit

ISpot.tv received accreditation for its ad occurrence catalog from the Media Rating Council, the industry’s ad quality arbiter, in a move the Nielsen rival hopes will lead to broader accreditation. The TV ad cataloging service, introduced in 2012, is widely used by marketers to track their own and competitor ad activity and is also a component of other audience measurement tools where iSpot competes with Nielsen. Ad Age Media Summit Hear from industry leaders during October event in NYC Register here The MRC accreditation doesn’t cover iSpot’s audience measurement service, which relies mainly on big data sets such as automated content recognition (ACR) from smart TVs and return-path data from cable set-stop boxes. But it could be a step in that direction. Also read: Nielsen names new CEO “Having third-party verification of our data quality and standards is as important to us as it is to the MRC,” said Sean Muller, iSpot founder and CEO, in a statement. “Our ad occurrence measurement is foundational to all of our other solutions. We look forward to continuing to work alongside the MRC in the future on auditing our other services, such as audience measurement and CTV verification.” ISpot’s measurement is offered as a rival currency by some networks, including NBCUniversal and Paramount and, by next year, Amazon Prime for “Thursday Night Football,” without MRC accreditation. Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao has held out his company’s MRC accreditation for panel-based ratings, restored in April, in contrast to rivals such as iSpot, VideoAmp and Comscore, which don’t have accreditation for their audience measurement. Comscore does have an MRC audit underway of its audience measurement at the household level for content at the quarter-hour level. Nielsen’s own accreditation of its big data approach is under MRC audit, which is expected to be considered Oct. 4 by the group, and the company has said it will allow trading on that data without accreditation for buyers and sellers that want to use it. ISpot, Comscore and VideoAmp also received conditional certification by the U.S. Joint Industry Committee last week, but the JIC describes that process as different from MRC accreditation, though it’s also based on a vote by both networks and agency executives. “ISpot’s newly accredited ad occurrence reporting helps to serve a crucial market need, and users can now have assurance that it meets the high bar necessary to achieve MRC accreditation,” said MRC CEO George Ivie in a statement. Media measurement blog Tracking TV, social and digital updates Click here

ISpot gets MRC accreditation for its ad catalog, in possible step toward broader audit

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