APB Blog – Importance of a Trusted Ecosystem

Today, the 4A’s Advertiser Protection Bureau (APB) is issuing a pledge of support from its members for third-party measurement & evaluations on every single ad impression.

The advertising industry is in a constant battle to build and regain trust for its clients and the industry itself.  Every stakeholder in the ecosystem has a role to play:

• Industry organizations create and audit brand safety and suitability standards that enable a more ethical and functional industry
• Agencies provide transparency around options and consultation to clients to grow their brands
• Platforms and publishers focus on providing controls to protect brands
• Brands need to build trust with consumers
• Verification partners create third-party data sets to help validate metrics

It’s a virtuous cycle that only works when all parties work towards common goals.  Even the most granular and nuanced metrics, like the definition of an impression or how to define brand safety, are critical to providing transparency across all parties.  Like a blockchain token, where each new block provides transparency into the entire chain, our industry falters when industry participants fail to meet their responsibilities and obligations to the ecosystem and do not strive for the best standards and transparency.

The 4A’s Advertiser Protection Bureau (APB) is a committee of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.  The APB is composed of leading buy-side organizations and advertising and media holding companies. It was established in 2018 to help combat harmful content and to address the industry’s most challenging issues relating to brand safety and suitability.  This group has helped create industry definitions for impression counting, shaped initial industry frameworks around brand safety and suitability, and put a stake in the ground asserting that trusted news publishers’ inventory is brand safe.  The group has been vocal in supporting third-party verification and industry audits.

The Media Rating Council (MRC) has three stated goals:

• Secure media industry measurement services that are valid, reliable, and effective.
• Evolve and determine minimum disclosure and ethical criteria for media measurement services.
• Audit measurement services in conformance with the criteria and procedures developed.

To meet these goals, audits should cover third-party verification and a partner’s ability to ubiquitously define, measure and report on: impressions, viewability, brand safety and suitability, and the enforcement of standards.

The time is ripe for the industry to refresh its pledge of support and coverage of third-party verification and MRC audits and to expand that support to include not just measurement partners but social platforms as well.  Digital media is rapidly expanding to serve millions of impressions every second, billions every day, and trillions every month.  To ensure we’re creating the right frameworks for accountability to track these impressions, our pledge to support verification and audits is critical to being on the right side of communicating to advertisers, consumers, and regulators that the appropriate controls are in place.  We owe it to our industry to continue to strive for the highest standards possible, and if self-regulation doesn’t continue at the speed of innovation, we run the risk that regulations may be imposed that do not benefit all parties involved.

While we have seen recent industry announcements for new MRC audits, our hope is that these evaluations and other platforms’ commitment to audits move as quickly as our industry.  These complex audits and involvement of 3P verification to report on accurate metrics are crucial to simplifying trust in a fast-paced industry.

 

Blog post written by Yale Cohen, EVP Global Digital Standards, Publicis Media & Chair of the 4A’s APB & supported by 4A’s APB member holding companies, including: Publicis Media, GroupM, Dentsu, IPG, Horizon, Havas, & OMD