Meta earns MRC accreditation for content-level brand safety on Facebook

The Media Rating Council (MRC), has just given Facebook’s parent company Meta accreditation for their brand-safety efforts on Facebook In-Stream Video and Instant Articles in desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app. 

This accreditation is of Meta’s Partner Monetization Policies, Content Monetization Policies and associated content-level brand safety and suitability controls for the placements mentioned above.

What is the MRC. Meta says “The MRC is a nonprofit industry organization whose goal is to ensure metrics and measurement across the media industry are valid, reliable and effective. The MRC also works with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) in developing MRC’s industry standards around brand safety and suitability, which aim to ensure harmful content is not monetized.”

MRC requirements. Meta says they conducted in-depth preparation prior to the external audit, during which they provided data and evidence for the auditors to test their systems and conduct their assessment. Meta says that through the external audit, they demonstrated to the MRC that their processes and systems meet its rigorous requirements across several areas, including:

• Enforcement of Content and Partner Monetization Policies through machine learning and human review
• Quality assurance of business partners and performance measurement
• The controls made available to advertisers on the platforms
• Brand safety reporting and disclosures

Testing further brand suitability. Meta also announced in March that they were testing a content-based inventory filter for Facebook Feed and Instagram Feed. “We will continue to iterate on the brand safety and suitability solutions we make available to businesses and plan to extend the MRC audit to the content-based inventory filter controls for Feed once they are generally available,” Meta says.

Dig deeper. Read the announcement from Meta here.

Why we care. Normally Meta wouldn’t be at the top of my mind when I think of brand safety. But I think it deserves a little credit. In addition to the numerous safety measures implemented, they also reinstated their political ad restrictions for the week leading up to the general election, just like they did in 2020.

Meta seems to be working hard to regain its reputation. This is more than I can say for some other brands in the news this week. Meta may not be the most popular ad platform for advertisers anymore, but it’s climbing the ranks again as far as giving marketers more control over their brand safety options.