IAB shares updates for MRAID, including viewability & audibility measurement

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.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

As Third Door Media’s paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.