January 2025

• 2025 Strategic Goals
• Member Spotlight with ANA's Bill Duggan
• TAG on the Road
• One More Thing

TAG 2025 Priorities: Expanding Publisher Paths to Achieve TAG Seals, Expanding Threat AdSec Threat Exchange Strengthening Transparency

Every January, TAG shares its strategic priorities and key initiatives for the coming year, enabling members and supporters to prepare for those new opportunities, adapt to upcoming plans, and work in collaboration with the global TAG Community to advance our common goals.

TAG’s 2025 strategic goals focus on strengthening and diversifying efforts to enhance industry safety, transparency, and threat intelligence sharing across the industry. To do so, TAG plans to broaden publisher paths to achieving  its Certified Against Fraud (CAF) and Brand Safety Certified (BSC) Seals, operationalize and expand vital threat-sharing initiatives, and push transparency deeper through all parts of the supply chain, among other efforts.

Below are the highlights of TAG’s 2025 plans across our four major mission areas:

Eliminate Fraudulent Traffic

• TAG’s "Be Bold(er) for Publishers" initiative will explore and implement more paths for publishers to achieve the Certified Against Fraud (CAF) Seal in certain markets, making the seals more accessible while maintaining its high standards.
• TAG will continue to evolve its Certified Against Fraud (CAF) Guidelines with the development and release of CAF version 10, a "Codification Version" that will offer clarifications and simplifications to the guidelines.

Share Threat Intelligence

• TAG will expand its AdSec Threat Exchange with the launch of an Enterprise Threat Exchange (ETX) focused on the sharing of threat intelligence about enterprise-level cybersecurity threats between CISOs at agency holding companies, social media platforms and adtech intermediaries. 
• TAG will also operationalize and expand the Piracy Threat Exchange (PTX) operations within the AdSec Threat Exchange, enabling the real-time sharing of threat intelligence between IP rights holders and adtech intermediaries to stop criminals from monetizing stolen IP with advertising revenue. 
• TAG will release Certified Against Malware (CAM) Guidelines v6, including a new Creative Source Tagging Standard.

Promote Brand Safety

• TAG’s "Be Bold(er) for Publishers" initiative will extend broader access to the Brand Safety Certified (BSC) Seal, increasing accessibility in new markets while maintaining its rigorous standards.
• TAG will roll out the Human-Created Content Tool (HCC) for publishers to employ in helping their customers to distinguish between human-generated and AI-generated content, ensuring brand safety in an evolving content landscape.
• TAG will develop and release version 2 of its  Keyword Exclusion List Toolset (KELT), introducing a "never-exclude" keyword list to complement its existing “always-exclude” keyword list, helping brands avoid over-filtering and maintain ad reach while ensuring safety.

Enable Transparency

• Following a 20% increase in Certified for Transparency (CFT) Seals awarded in 2024, TAG will continue to drive adoption of the CFT Program, further enabling the industry to benefit from a transparent and accountable supply chain. 
• TAG TrustNet will expand its research agenda, delivering new industry insights that provide guidance for critical decision-making in digital advertising.

TAG Releases Inaugural “Impact and Compliance Report” Highlighting Organizational Progress and Growth Metrics

Earlier this week, TAG released its first annual Impact and Compliance Report, which quantified the effectiveness of TAG programs in strengthening the digital advertising supply chain for advertisers, agencies, publishers, and adtech providers.

Commenting on the report, TAG CEO Mike Zaneis said, “For nearly a decade, TAG has worked with companies across the industry to create a safer and more transparent digital advertising supply chain. This report shows the measurable impact of our efforts across our four mission areas, demonstrating in concrete metrics how TAG’s programs, tools, and community have safeguarded both companies and consumers from bad actors while improving the quality and transparency of the broader ecosystem.”

Highlights from the report include:

TAG’s Global Reach

• TAG Members span 43 countries worldwide. 
• 226 companies held at least one TAG seal at the end of 2024. 

Certified Against Fraud Program

• The first financial impact analysis of the digital advertising industry’s anti-fraud programs -- conducted in partnership with the 4A’s, ANA, and IAB -- found those efforts resulted in $10.8 billion in ad fraud savings for U.S. advertisers in 2023. 
• CAF continued to successfully maintain sub-1% invalid traffic (IVT) rates across TAG Certified Channels (TCC) globally, with U.S. rates holding them under that benchmark for the past four years and Europe for six. 
• TAG’s Data Center IP (DCIP) List tool identified more than 104 million unique high-risk IP addresses in 2024. 

Brand Safety Certified Program

• TAG expanded its ongoing efforts to defund intellectual property criminals with the launch of a comprehensive pre-bid “Pirate Domain Exclusion List (PDEL), a threat intelligence tool that helps advertisers avoid exposure to pirate sites.. 
• The launch of the Keyword Exclusion List Toolset (KELT) created a baseline of best practices for brands and agencies to maintain an effective keyword list. 

Certified Against Malware Program 

• Last April, TAG released Malvertising Taxonomy v2 with updates including new subcategories and additional malvertising techniques, including steganography, browser extensions and hijackers, click-jacking, SEO poisoning, and exploit kits. 
  
  

Certified for Transparency

• TAG TrustNet now provides campaign data insights for more than 40 brands, thanks in part to increased access to log-level data. 
• ANA’s most recent benchmark report highlighted a 22% increase in ad spend productivity since its 2023 programmatic transparency study was released, representing an additional $8.2 billion in ad spend productivity.
  
  

Threat-Sharing

• In 2024, TAG’s AdSec Threat Exchange increased in threat-sharing activity by 40% to combat malvertising attacks over the prior year. 
• TAG’s threat-sharing community now includes practitioners from 11 countries spanning 7 time zones and providing 21.5 hours of human coverage each day. 
  
  

In addition, the report provided an update on TAG’s Due Process for Non-Compliance and Appeal, the compliance guidelines which are a critical feature of TAG certification programs. The Due Process governs investigations of instances of non-compliance by a TAG certified member, as well as the consequences for findings of non-compliance. 

During 2024, together with TAG’s Leadership Council and industry partners, TAG streamlined and enhanced the Due Process guidelines to strengthen TAG’s non-compliance investigation and response enforcement, while continuing to provide members with opportunities for remediation and appeal. Companies found to be not in compliance with TAG certification requirements may lose their ability to be certified for between six months and five years. 

"For the first time, we have a comprehensive, data-driven analysis of how TAG’s programs protect advertisers, publishers, and consumers from fraud, malvertising, and brand safety risks,” said Rachel Nyswander Thomas, COO of TAG. “The insights in this report demonstrate the power of TAG’s certification, compliance and intelligence tools, and threat-sharing forums, while also providing a roadmap for future enhancements. As we move forward, we will continue working with our partners around the globe to set even higher standards and drive greater accountability across the industry."

Connect with Team TAG at Key Industry Events in 2025!

If you’re going to be traveling to a major industry event in 2025, let us know! We’d love to get together in person, build new relationships, and talk about how TAG can help your business succeed. A partial list of our confirmed events for the year is above, with more updates to come.

From “Advertisers say Meta's content-moderation changes make them uneasy. They won't stop spending.” in Business Insider:

Mike Zaneis of the ad initiative the Trustworthy Accountability Group said Meta's announcement should be seen as an evolution of the platform's brand-safety standards and not a retreat from protecting users and marketers.

"The speed and accuracy of the Community Notes tool is impressive and it's the increased transparency that makes a fundamental difference for users and marketers alike," Zaneis said of X's implementation of the concept so far. "If something seems to be working, we shouldn't discourage others from adopting the approach just because it hasn't been precisely tested."

Keep Up-To-Date With The Working Group Brief

TAG's working groups are a crucial source point of conversation and collaboration for digital advertising. Make sure you stay up to date with the latest progress and developments with the Workin Group Brief. 

Read the latest Working Group Brief 👉 tagtoday.net/working-groups

Leverage TAG Research into Your Everyday!

From APAC Fraud Snapshot reports, to UK Brand Safety Consumer reports, to Best Practices whitepapers, TAG's research is here to support our member's day-to-day compliance as well as strategic planning. 

Visit our Data and Insight page 👉 tagtoday.net/insights

Let's Make Some Noise Together 🤝

We love it when TAG members highlight our work together to fight digital ad crime and improve transparency. Please send any TAG-related press releases, blogs, or other announcements to Andrew Weinstein at andrewwstn@gmail.com for review before release.