The Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA) has taken a step towards bolstering its mandate of transparency and accountability in the Canadian marketing landscape by joining the Media Rating Council (MRC).

The ACA is the first Canadian member of the New York-based, industry-funded self-regulatory body. Its membership will give Canadian advertisers a forum to push non-audited and accredited vendors to gain MRC accreditation. Canadian advertisers will also get greater oversight of the MRC’s work with Canadian media measurement systems across broadcast and digital.

In addition, the ACA will be able to get involved in the MRC’s work on viewability, invalid traffic, impressions and click definitions, along with gaining greater insight into the state of accreditation and audits.

Chris Williams, VP of digital, ACA, said the partnership is an important step towards having digital metrics that are the same across the board.

“There are a lot of places that write up guidelines, but no one gets kicked out of digital associations for not following guidelines, but people do lose their MRC accreditation because of it,” he said. “That’s a completely different level of accountability.”

The ACA’s announcement comes on the heels of P&G’s chief brand officer Marc Pritchard announcing earlier this week at the annual IAB conference that it would no longer be working with digital media companies that don’t use MRC standards. Williams said what’s interesting about P&G’s announcement is that Pritchard is also the chair of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in the U.S., which means it’s a conversation that’s happening at a much higher level as well.

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