In an effort to not just provide advertisers with more information, but also increase transparency, Google is expanding their existing relationships with third-party measurement groups like MRC, comScore, and Nielsen. These relationships help provide information across just about all Google platforms, including YouTube.
Google’s SVP of Ads and Commerce, Sridhar Ramaswamy said, “We face some fairly fundamental issues in how we think about users, content, advertising.” He went on to comment that they are going to, “actively engage with all stakeholders more proactively and act more aggressively to fix problems and make things better.” “It is clear that there is a strong need for commonly accepted standards by which advertising can be measured. It’s also clear to all of us that these metrics need to be verified by third parties and measured by third parties.”
This is why they are putting a strong effort toward taking advantage of the third party solutions available. For example, google currently supports 30 of the standards offered by Media Ratings Council (MRC), and they are working on adding an additional 40 of their standards. These are related to transparency regarding impressions, clicks, and viewability.
In addition, YouTube will be expanding their measurement research offered by Nielsen and comScore. Nielsen is providing a lot of data on mobile measurement for the video site, and will be added to UK, Germany, and France. comScore’s measurement services are also expanding out to 13 additional countries.
With the ongoing issues that major tech companies are having regarding transparency, data security, and how the collected data is being used, this seems to be a step in the right direction from Google.
