TAG CEO Mike Zaneis said his organization’s certification is thorough, and provided examples of questions: “Do you have the right policies? Do you have the technology to enforce those policies in an effective way? Are you monitoring your practices? Are you evolving your practices? Are your systems secure? Is there separation between your brand safety team and your ad sales team, for example, because they may have competing goals?”
Is too much expected of accreditation firms?
Six sources were more critical of TAG than the MRC. They questioned TAG’s opaque auditing practices, lower standards for certification, and willingness to allow self-reporting.
While both TAG and the MRC conduct annual re-audits of certified organizations to ensure their practices are up to snuff, TAG also requires quarterly self-audits—and ADWEEK sources questioned their reliability.
“Any standard that relies on self-reported documentation is not rigorous enough. Testing methodologies should be public, replicable, iterative, and peer-reviewed,” said the owner of a buy-side consultancy, speaking on condition of anonymity. “[Or] blind spots will continue to persist.”
Zaneis characterized self-reporting as just “an added layer of accountability” between third-party audits.
He also said it’s not TAG’s fault when organizations like IAS and DoubleVerify fail to identify sites like imgbb.com as non-brand safe.
It’s unrealistic for TAG to prevent the monetization of all illicit or illegal content online, he added. “The internet’s a big place,” Zaneis said.
Zaneis told ADWEEK it is unfair to focus on one domain that slipped through the cracks, since many other sites with user-generated content have hosted CSAM.
“Are the senators claiming that Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all of Google, all of Amazon, all of Discord as a platform, all of Yahoo, all of Reddit, are illegal CSAM sites and thusly, should be demonetized?” he said.
