WFA has long championed greater transparency across the media ecosystem, including clearer understanding of how digital ad auctions determine winners, set prices and prioritise placements. Today, around 80% of online advertising spend flows through these complex and often opaque auction systems, yet few buyers or sellers fully understand how they function.

The Media Rating Council (MRC) is leading the development of a voluntary framework of disclosure standards designed to bring greater clarity to how auction-based ad systems operate. Rather than prescribing how platforms should run their auctions, the framework focuses on making key mechanics more transparent, including how winners are determined, how prices are set and where guaranteed deals may bypass open auctions.

This 45-minute online session will explore what the proposed standards could mean for advertisers, agencies, and platforms, and how greater transparency could strengthen trust, accountabilit, and performance across programmatic, social, retail media and CTV.