• Summary

• Full Report

• Press Release

Summary

TAG’s certification programs provide important benchmarks to improve trust and combat criminal activity within the digital advertising industry. Its catalogue of compliance and intelligence tools provides the industry with vital protection, insight and intelligence. The threat-sharing activity taking place within TAG’s AdSec Threat Exchange strengthens the global industry’s collective defence against a myriad of digital threats.

In a first-of-its-kind analysis, this TAG Compliance and Impact Report quantifies the effectiveness of TAG programs and their impact in strengthening the digital advertising supply chain for advertisers, agencies, publishers, and adtech providers.

Key findings include:

TAG’s Global Reach

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

Fraud 

• TAG’s Data Center IP (DCIP) List tool identified more than 104 million unique high-risk IP addresses in 2024. 
• 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. 

Brand Safety

• TAG expanded its ongoing efforts to defund intellectual property criminals with the launch of a comprehensive pre-bid “Pirate Domain Exclusion List (PDEL), a tool that helps advertisers avoid exposure to pirate sites. that proactively protects advertisers from unintentional exposure to unsafe 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. By simplifying and standardizing the approach, brands and agencies can expand the range of brand-suitable content, increase user engagement, and reduce unnecessary blocking that reduced ad revenue in the past. 

Malvertising

• TAG continued to raise the industry’s already-high standards against malvertising by expanding the core criteria necessary for vendors to be recognized with the TAG Certified Against Malware Seal for effective anti-malvertising services. 
• TAG released its Malvertising Taxonomy v2 in April 2024 with considerable updates to both the guiding principles and the examples of malvertising events included and described. The Taxonomy also included new subcategories and additional malvertising techniques, including steganography, browser extensions and hijackers, click-jacking, SEO poisoning, exploit kits and more. 

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. Within the context of a $104 billion open web programmatic marketplace, the increase represents an additional $8.2 billion in ad spend productivity. 

Threat Intelligence and Sharing

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

Full Report

To download the full 2024 Impact and Compliance Report, click below. 

Press Release

To read the full press release, click below.