Standards · 21 Jul 2026
What the MRC auction transparency standard asks sellers to disclose
Buyers can see the bid they sent. They often cannot see the rules that turned that bid into a price. The Media Rating Council’s 2026 standard says those rules should be disclosed.
Digital ads clear in auctions: open exchange, retail media, search, social, and streaming TV. The bid is visible to the bidder. The scoring, the reserve, and the reason a lower bid sometimes pays more than a higher one are often not.
In January 2026 the Media Rating Council published its Digital Advertising Auction Transparency Standards. They do not design the auction for you. They say a seller who wants to be measured against the standard should tell buyers how the auction works, and report what happened.
What has to be explainable
- Auction type. First-price, second-price, fixed price, or a quality-weighted score. “We run an auction” is not a type. See first-price auctions and bid shading.
- How the winner is chosen. Highest bid, or bid times a quality or relevance score. If a $2 bid can beat a $4 bid, say what the extra factor is.
- How the price is set after the winner is known. Paying your bid is a different promise from paying one cent more than the next bid.
- Reserve prices. Whether a floor exists, and the method used to move it. A floor that changes every hour is allowed. A floor that changes in secret is the problem.
- Use of budgets and future information. If the auctioneer softens or hardens the auction because it already knows today’s budget or tomorrow’s demand, that use should be described.
- How often the rules change, and where the new rules are posted.
What reporting adds
A policy document is not enough. The standard also pushes outcome reporting: enough information that a buyer can check whether the auction they were promised is the auction that ran. In OpenRTB environments that means using the fields that already exist for a transaction ID, auction type, and clearing price, and making the same facts available to measurement where you can.
Multi-bid — several bids from one DSP in one response — should be identifiable so two creatives from one buyer are not mistaken for two independent auctions. A stable transaction ID is what ties those bids to one impression.
Who this is for
The document covers display, video, audio, search, social, retail media, and streaming CTV. An SSP that only runs OpenRTB is in scope. So is a retailer that ranks ads with a private quality score. The duty is disclosure, not a single global auction design.
Publishers who set floors inside an SSP should ask how those floors are described to buyers. If the only number the DSP sees is a rejection, the reserve is not transparent, whatever the contract says.
A short checklist for an SSP
- Write down the auction type per placement or deal, in words a media buyer can read.
- State the winning rule, including any quality multiplier.
- State the pricing rule, and pass the clearing price back in the win or billing notice. See nurl, burl, and lurl.
- Describe how floors are chosen and how often they move.
- Keep a change log when the scoring formula changes.
FAQ
Does this replace OpenRTB?
No. OpenRTB carries the bid. The MRC standard says which auction facts should be disclosed and reported. Use both.
Do I have to reveal every bidder’s price?
The standard is about rules and outcomes the buyer needs to audit their own result. It is not a feed of every competitor’s bid to the open internet.
Are quality scores banned?
No. A retail or search-style score can still decide the winner. The seller should say that a score exists and what kinds of inputs it uses.
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