A PPM-related piece that appeared in RBR’s “Viewpoint” category recently included a statement asserting that the MRC doesn’t consider the technical aspects of a meter in its accreditation process. That’s not the case at all; MRC auditors spend literally hundreds of hours testing the technology of any metered measurement system that we consider for accreditation, both in laboratory settings as well as in a variety of real world environments. So that assessment is very much a part of our process, whether it’s for Nielsen TV meters, or Arbitron PPMs, or online measurement systems, or any other measurement approach that relies a technological component to determine audiences.
It’s also relevant to note that it’s because of our requirement that measurement services seeking MRC accreditation submit all aspects of their services to our audit process, including highly proprietary details such as the technology that underlies their metering systems, that we have strict rules in place for maintaining the confidentiality of audit-related information. In fact, it was the U.S. Congress who originally recommended that MRC adopt this strong confidentiality policy at the time of our organization’s inception in the 1960s.
–David Gunzerath, SVP/Associate Director, Media Rating Council
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