TAG Expands Advertising Industry Board with New Members from 21st Century Fox, AppNexus, ESPN, NBCUniversal, Time Warner Cable, Unilever

The Trustworthy Accountability Group’s (TAG) Board of Directors just gained a few more notable members, including senior execs from AppNexus, Time Warner Cable, Unilever and some of the world’s most valuable premium content providers, 21st Century Fox, ESPN and NBCUniversal.

It is my pleasure to announce our newest board members:
• Krishan Bhatia – Executive Vice President, Business Operations and Strategy at NBCUniversal
• Joan Gillman – Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Time Warner Cable Media
• John Kosner - Executive Vice President, Digital and Print Media, ESPN
• Joe Marchese - President of Advanced Advertising Products for Fox
• Rob Master - Vice President, Global Media, Categories and Partnerships for Unilever
• Michael Rubenstein - President of AppNexus

These individuals join a powerhouse TAG Board that includes executives from the nation’s largest brand advertisers like Colgate-Palmolive, Proctor & Gamble, McDonald’s and Mondelez; online media companies like AOL, Google, and Facebook; ad agencies like GroupM and Publicis; and advertising technology companies like Brightroll (a division of Yahoo!) and Rubicon Project. (A complete list of TAG’s 30 Board Members is available here.)

Our Board Members provide important leadership, direction and oversight to TAG’s work. They are also thought leaders and advocates for TAG’s initiatives to build trust in the digital advertising marketplace. Under the Board sits the TAG Leadership Council, which works to implement the Board’s high-level direction, while overseeing development of the products and initiatives that will best advance TAG’s mission.

TAG’s initiatives also draw on the expertise of almost 150 industry experts representing 85 organizations who contribute to our working groups and committees. These groups are focused on developing industry standards, principles and tools to help differentiate trustworthy partners from those associated with illegal or negative activity that harms the digital advertising supply chain at large.

Individual working groups are focused on the specific TAG priorities, including eliminating fraudulent digital ad traffic, fighting the malware that is infecting the digital ad ecosystem, promoting brand integrity by stopping ad-supported digital piracy, and protecting brands through greater transparency.

Recent examples of TAG’s work through its leadership and working groups include TAG’s Anti-Fraud Threat List, a shared industry database of domains that are known sources of fraudulent traffic, and the complementary effort announced this week to block illegitimate and non-human traffic originating from data centers. You can learn more about our working groups, including how to participate, in the Working Groups section of our website.

TAG and its cross-industry partners are planning a range of other new initiatives that we’ll announce over coming weeks and months. I encourage you to monitor this website and to follow TAG on social media to stay informed about our work and how you can play a role in fighting crime in the digital ad ecosystem.

Mike Zaneis, CEO, Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG)
www.tagtoday.net