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In the wake of revelations that Facebook overestimated a key video metric for years, Google -- the other half of the mobile advertising duopoly -- is having troubles of its own.

While Google's issue was more of a technicality than intentionally misleading advertisers, it seems the search giant's publisher ad network, DoubleClick, failed to update its measurement model to account for new rules from a major trade group in April. This led to the suspension of two of its mobile viewership metrics.

The Measurement Rating Council -- the benchmark accreditor for how online ad impressions are measured -- announced the decision last month, Business Insiderfirst reported.

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The group rewrote its rules in spring to mandate that ad impressions only be counted after "reasonable assurance that the ad was rendered on the device." The previous standard measured each time an ad was served.

Because of the scope of the project, Google wasn't able to meet the new criteria within the allowed 30-day window, and accreditation of its mobile web impression measurement and viewability metric -- used to verify impressions -- was put on hold until the company is able to address the issue.

A Google spokesperson told Mashablethe company is hoping to do so by the end of the year.

In the meantime, the Alphabet-owned site still has dozens of other metrics with the requisite papers in order.

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“As the industry transitions to new metrics for how they count ads, we’re working closely with publisher partners to make sure they continue to thrive," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "We’re updating the methodology for our publisher ad server [DoubleClick For Publishers] to reflect the change."

Proper viewership gauges have become an increasingly big topic of conversation in the ad industry as ad fraud -- networks of bots designed to mimic human behavior and scam advertisers -- and technical load problems have thrown into question the true value of display advertising.

Two years ago, Google revealed that half of all digital ads served are never seen by actual people for these reasons.

The MRC -- an obscure, half-century-old agency with an outsized influence -- has been leading the charge for a new viewability standard along with other industry trade bodies like the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

A consensus was eventually reached: At least half of every ad must be seen for one second -- or two seconds for video -- in order to qualify.

"We did a lot of research around this focused on where you had evidence that ads were in view and had been recognized by a user," David Gunzerath, senior VP and associate director at the MRC, said in an interview at the time of the update. "With all our measurement standards, we're always sort of revisiting them and re-challenging them over time."

The MRC has accredited a total of 18 different companies for ad measurement, including giants like Nielsen and Rentrak, but not all of them have been vetted since the change due to the intervals of the group's audits.

The suspension is expected to have little impact on Google's day-to-day business.

TopicsGoogle

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