Media Rating Council Proposes Transparency Rules For Digital Audio Ad Auctions.

The Media Rating Council is moving to bring some sunlight to what can be an opaque process of selling ads through digital auction. The ad industry’s not-for-profit industry self-regulatory body has released a draft set of standards that it says would bring greater transparency, disclosure and reporting to digital advertising auctions, including digital audio ads. It outlines proposed requirements, guidance, and best practices with industry feedback to guide release of the final set of recommendations in the coming months.

The proposal seeks to eliminate the black box around how ads are priced and placed in automated auctions. The MRC says the effort aims to ensure that both buyers and sellers can see how auction rules work, how winning bids are chosen, and how final prices are calculated. The proposal is not aimed at any one platform, ad auctioneer or auction type.

Instead, the draft standards are designed to supplement existing protocols like OpenRTB, not replace them. They would also create a structure that supports independent auditing of auction platforms.

For audio platforms that run closed-loop systems — such as major streaming and podcast networks — the proposal will require greater disclosure about how bids are converted into prices, including any discounts, tech fees, pacing rules, or relevance and engagement scores used to adjust bids. Platforms would also need to disclose whether auctions are first-price, second-price, or modified second-price and share the variables that determine winners. Floors must be published and applied equally to all buyers.

Programmatic audio exchanges operating under OpenRTB would be expected to use standardized identifiers. The draft also proposes that platforms make bid and delivery data accessible to independent, accredited measurement providers like the MRC, allowing third-party validation for metrics such as audibility, invalid traffic, brand safety, and audience verification. It says these systems would be subject to the same MRC audit processes already in place for viewability and other digital metrics.

To facilitate that, all auction operators would be required to provide machine-readable reporting explaining how prices were determined, with clear documentation of bid factors and change disclosures when auction rules are updated. The standards also recommend annual independent audits to verify compliance, supported by the ad-buying community.

The effort at standards originated from a project led by the MRC alongside the ad agency Omnicom. It has secured the backing from the IAB Tech Lab along with several buy-side organizations, such as the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers, and the World Federation of Advertisers. In addition to audio ad auctions, the proposed standards would also cover display, text, and video formats within digital, search, social, retail media, streaming CTV and addressable TV channels.

“Despite the growth and diversity of ad auctions in media, there were previously no standards for ad auctioneer conduct regarding disclosure and reporting of auction rules or transparency into auction processes and outcomes,” the document says. “It is the objective of these standards to promote transparency around auction rules and scoring along with reporting and standardization where possible and appropriate, to ensure that auction rules and outcomes are understood for all parties.”

By bringing podcast and streaming audio marketplaces under the same transparency and audit framework as video and display, the MRC says the goal is to increase advertiser confidence, simplify cross-platform measurement, and ensure fair pricing visibility in one of the fastest-growing digital ad categories.

Read the draft MRC Digital Advertising Auction Transparent Standards HERE.