IAB shares updates for MRAID, including viewability & audibility measurement

This marks the first big update to the IAB's standard for mobile rich media ads in more than four years.

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The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Tech Lab released updates for the Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definition (MRAID) for public comment on Wednesday.

MRAID is the common API set by the IAB for mobile rich media ads to communicate with mobile apps. It allows developers creating ads with HTML5 and JavaScript to use universal commands to tell apps how the rich media ads should perform so that, for example, video ads can run in native app players, and ads can perform actions like expand, resize and display image galleries.

The updates included in MRAID 3.0:

  1. Enabling measurement of viewability and audibility
  2. Detecting whether an ad is running in an MRAID-compliant environment at the time an ad is initialized
  3. The ability to get location data if access is enabled by the user
  4. Guidance on pre-loading ads to ensure ads are only shown to users when they are ready for display, not when they are still loading
  5. Integrating Video Player Ad Interface Definition (VPAID) so video ads can be measured in mobile apps that are using MRAID

“In today’s mobile-centric world, guidelines that allow for interoperability are imperative,” said Alanna Gombert, senior vice president, Technology and Ad Operations, IAB, and general manager, IAB Tech Lab. “These revised guidelines will further enhance and improve the rich mobile ad experience for consumers, while also improving ad effectiveness for advertisers and publishers.”

This is the first significant update to MRAID in more than four years. Public comments are welcome through January 30.


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About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
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 wrote 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.

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