Not Trustworthy No Accountability Mob

Year after year, TAG (Trustworthy Accountability Group) has published press releases saying that ad fraud is low and claiming that their "certifications" caused that. Year after year, I have been telling them their numbers are wrong and are doing a disservice to the entire digital advertising industry because of how severely it under-reports the actual levels of fraud. TAG is misleading advertisers at a time when advertisers should be the most vigilant about where their ads and dollars are going. Why is TAG doing this, knowingly? We've seen this movie before during the financial crisis of 2018 -- even the ratings agencies "were in on it" giving triple-A ratings to essentially junk mortgages bundled with good ones. Everyone was making money; and no one wanted to kill that "golden goose." The exact same thing is happening in digital marketing; and a similar correction is looming.

Instead of being open the possibility that the numbers they are citing do not sufficiently capture all the fraud, TAG and it's parent, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) have gone on the attack, publicly attempting to discredit me for years. That's fine, because after years, they have not succeeded.

Let me articulate to those who care why TAG's quoted numbers are incorrect and fraud is far higher than the 1% they like to claim.

Those numbers are based on the detection tech of popular IVT vendors, which has been shown to miss most of the fraud and the most obvious fraud. Their tech is tuned for looking for bots; it is unclear whether they also look for many forms of fraud that are done by the publishers themselves, like ad stacking, pixel stuffing, off-page ads, popunders, ad slot refreshing, etc. Bots are also able to trick their detection or block their detection tags entirely, so they have no data to use to label them as IVT. That explains why large buckets of unknown sites and apps are still labeled as 0.01% IVT. That means they could not detect or catch any IVT. Further, TAG's "certified against fraud" is based on self-attested paperwork and payment of their annual fee. Even the "independent verification" is done by a group that has no tech or data of their own to know if any of these companies are sufficiently fending off ad fraud.

Aside from ad fraud, TAG's "brand safety certification" is equally useless. It has now been documented that ad budgets from the largest advertisers are funding disinformation and propaganda, and even sanctioned sites and entities. See: ProPublica - How Google’s Ad Business Funds Disinformation Around the World, October 29, 2022 and Google’s ad exchange & Fortune 500 advertisers are working with Treasury sanctioned websites in Russia, Iran, & Syria. Over the years, we have seen criminal organizations and other groups intent on spreading disinformation set up hundreds of websites and collect ad revenue to fund further expansion.

"Brands’ ads on sanctioned sites are not just embarrassing; they are in direct violation of sanctions because their ad dollars flow to those sites. Even though Google’s network makes it hard for advertisers to know where their money is going or to stop that flow, brands can't use that excuse any more. They must take an active role themselves to comply with the law. Brands can do this by stopping ad spend on Google’s network until Google removes the obstructions that are currently preventing brands from complying with sanctions."

For years, marketers assumed that ads placed via programmatic channels were working, because they were seeing vast quantities of ads (assumed reach), low CPM prices (assumed cost efficiency), and high click rates (assumed performance). Even though few had truly assessed whether the sales they saw were truly incremental and caused by programmatic digital ads, marketers assumed they were getting ROI. The bigger problem that brands face now is one of compliance with regulations or violations of sanctions. They can no longer claim they did not know; it has been documented repeatedly. They can no longer blame someone else; even though Google does not make it easy for them to turn off or avoid sanctioned sites, it is still the brand advertiser's responsibility because their ads and dollars are still flowing to criminal organizations, state sponsored actors, hackers, and sanctioned entities.

When will brand advertisers wake up and take control of their ad dollars, instead of trusting a group that is not trustworthy or accountable. The current trade associations and certification bodies are created to protect the status quo, just like the tobacco, big oil, and pharma lobbies. The ad tech companies like Google might do the right thing when provided with incontrovertible evidence. But they will not proactively turn off ad fraud or dollars flowing to sanctioned sites because it is too harmful to their revenue to do so.

Brand advertisers must stand up now and take action themselves, by "voting with their dollars." Shift money away from ad networks that don't enforce their own policies or have deficient technologies which obstruct brands from slowing or stopping their ads and the flow of dollars to sites and actors that violate sanctions.

Source of screen shot: Adalytics