Media Rating Council (MRC)

EU Fines Google €890M; TAG Loses Ground; Havas H1 Results

The European Commission has fined Google €890m for two breaches of the Digital Markets Act, finding preferential treatment of its own services in Search (€460m) and restrictions on app developers via Google Play (€430m); Google has 60 days to show compliance. The Trusted Accountability Group (TAG) is losing influence after Procter & Gamble dropped its TAG mandate and major companies including Google and The Trade Desk did not renew certifications, prompting industry scepticism about TAG's audit rigour. Advertising group Havas reported solid H1 2026 performance: +2.5% organic net revenue growth, total net revenue of €1,362m, adjusted EBIT of €150m (11.0% margin), and confirmed full-year guidance of +2.0% to +3.0% organic growth and a 13.2–13.5% adjusted EBIT margin.

W3C's Attribution API Reimagines Browser Measurement

The W3C's Private Advertising Technology (PAT) Working Group has published a working draft of an Attribution API and opened it for broader industry review. Major browser vendors and Big Tech — Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta and Mozilla — contributed to the proposal, which shifts ad-measurement toward browsers and aims to report conversions via aggregated, noise-added reports using aggregation services, multi‑party computation and differential privacy, with user controls to disable reporting. Supporters present it as an open-standards, auditable alternative to opaque tracking. Critics say the process favors large organizations, echoes Google’s earlier Attribution Reporting, could concentrate influence in browsers, impair transparency, fraud detection and interoperability, and bias attribution toward search, social and app-store channels over independent sites. PAT has begun outreach and expects a horizontal review by year‑end and a formal recommendation by end‑2026.

IAB Launches Redefining Media Types for Digital Video

The IAB announced the Redefining Media Types (RMT) Standard to create a common taxonomy for the fast-evolving digital video marketplace. Developed with technical specs from the IAB Tech Lab, the two-layer framework separates consumer-facing "media type categories" (how viewers engage with content) from "operational attributes" (data signals, device types, addressability and measurement). The RMT working group — which includes measurement experts, streaming product leads, chief investment officers from major holding companies and Media Rating Council members — began meeting in January. RMT is open for public comment until August 7, 2026, with a finalized version expected later in 2026. The IAB says the standard aims to reduce fragmentation, improve interoperability and provide clearer inputs for agentic AI in media buying if widely adopted.