In this month's newsletter:
Over the past year, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) has laid the foundation for an interlocking set of cross-industry programs that will extend best practices, share information, validate good actors, and cut off the flow of money to criminals who profit from fraud, malware, and piracy.
As we move into 2016, many of those programs are now shifting from the design phase to execution, and we’re thrilled at the progress that’s been made in that short time.
Last month, TAG’s Anti-Piracy Seal Program passed a notable milestone. DoubleVerify and IncoPro became the first two of what will soon be more than half a dozen leading providers of anti-piracy services to complete TAG’s third-party validation process and become approved Digital Advertising Assurance Providers (DAAPs). Other leading companies – comScore, Integral Ad Science, Veri-Site, Sovrn, and whiteBULLET – are also on track to complete the DAAP validation process soon. Those validated DAAPs will join a growing group of self-attested DAAPs, including Rocket Fuel, PubMatic, and SpotX, to establish a world-class tier of TAG-approved vendors of anti-piracy services.
Those DAAPs will help many of the leading brands and agencies that have taken the TAG Anti-Piracy Pledge to take commercially reasonable steps to fight piracy in their advertising campaigns. Those companies include the industry leaders shown in the graphics below.
In addition to our anti-piracy efforts, we’re also aggressively rolling out the “Verified by TAG” Program and dozens of companies from across the ad ecosystem have already applied to join the TAG Registry. Registered companies go through a proprietary background check and review process before receiving a unique identifier that they can use to distinguish themselves as trusted parties in the digital ad supply chain. As the second part of that “two-factor authentication” program, we expect to roll out TAG’s Payment ID System later this spring. This step will make it easier for digital advertisers to “follow the money” and keep ad revenue from falling into the hands of criminal actors.
As the recently released ANA-White Ops report made clear, the battle against fraud, malware, and piracy will not be easy nor short, but TAG is proud to have assembled an unprecedented coalition of nearly every major participant in the digital advertising ecosystem. With your help, we will begin to turn the tide this year by improving transparency across the supply chain, identifying legitimate participants, and stopping payments to the criminals who are poisoning our system.
Thank you for your continued support in that effort.
Mike Zaneis, CEO, Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG)
Select Brand Advertisers Taking the TAG Anti-Piracy Pledge
Select Advertising Agencies Taking the TAG Anti-Piracy Pledge
Topics: Blog
