Meta achieves brand safety milestone for Facebook with MRC accreditation

As a company, we’ve been deeply committed to building industry-leading brand safety standards and suitability solutions. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve received accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC) for content-level Brand Safety on Facebook. This accreditation is of Meta’s Partner Monetization Policies, Content Monetization Policies and associated content-level brand safety and suitability controls applied to Facebook In-Stream Video and Instant Articles in desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app. 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.

In August 2020, we committed to undertaking and releasing independent, third-party assessments of our brand safety and suitability solutions. This accreditation from the MRC comes after an extensive audit conducted by independent CPA auditors engaged by MRC that reviewed the brand safety policies, controls and processes we have in place to ensure a safe and suitable advertising environment on our platforms.

“We congratulate Meta on achieving this important accreditation, which meets the high bar of our Enhanced Content Level Context and Brand Safety Guidelines, ” said George W. Ivie, Executive Director and CEO of the MRC. “Brand safety and suitability are critical endeavors across the industry, and Meta’s commitment to these is evidenced by this accreditation. We look forward to working with Meta as they expand the scope of their brand safety and suitability offerings to be included in future MRC audits.”

To ensure our brand safety practices and controls are performing as expected, we conducted in-depth preparation prior to the external audit. During the external audit, we provided data and evidence so the auditors could test our systems and conduct their assessment thoroughly. Through the external audit, we demonstrated to the MRC that our processes and systems meet its rigorous requirements across several areas:

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

“Progressing as an industry toward stronger brand safety and suitability controls is critically important,” said Joe Barone, Managing Partner Brand Safety Americas, GroupM. “This accreditation is a testament to Meta’s commitment to supporting brands and creating a safer online environment for the people who use their technologies.”

We also recently announced that testing started for our 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 has made significant progress and investments into brand safety and suitability controls, providing advertisers with the tools to better align their campaign placements to content consistent with their values,” said Rob Rakowitz, Initiative Lead, Global Alliance for Responsible Media. “We congratulate Meta on receiving their first MRC content-level Brand Safety accreditation and are encouraged by their ongoing commitment to independent oversight.”

Meta is a leader when it comes to safety and integrity in the tech space, and our goal is to continue to raise the bar for the industry by creating safe environments. We will continue our commitment to transparency so people can hold us accountable and businesses can feel confident about partnering with us. Today’s accreditation is an important milestone in our ongoing efforts around brand safety and suitability as we look forward to working with key stakeholders across the industry.

For more detail on Meta’s brand safety and suitability methodology and what was evaluated by the MRC in the audit, please refer to the description of methodology in the Meta Business Help Center.