Amazon adopts MRC viewability standard for conversion attribution

Amazon announced this week that is now using the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) standard for viewability when reporting view-through conversions.

Why you should care

Under the MRC standard, an ad impression is considered viewable when at least 50 percent of the pixels are in-view for at least one second. Only impressions deemed viewable based on that standard are eligible for view-through conversion credits.

Until this update, advertisers have been able to opt to show ads only when an impression was viewable, but conversion attribution was not based on viewability. Instead view-through conversions were reported based on impressions served, with an attribution window of 14 days.

The change means that the view-through conversions Amazon now reports are based only on ad impressions that had a chance of being seen by the users that converted.

More on the news

• “With advertisers continuing to adopt the MRC standard, this change will enable straightforward evaluation of campaign results,” the company said in the announcement.
• The change to Amazon reporting is effective January 1.

Hat/tip: Bryant Garvin

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.