Video Ad Fraud Down 84% Thanks to TAG Multi-Part Certification

Some good news, for a change: The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is seeing video ad fraud rates plummet for companies that participate in its multi-step verification process. According to Rachel Nyswander Thomas, senior vice president of operations and public policy at TAG, her group is seeing ad fraud rates that are down 84 percent. Thomas presented these findings at the recent Video Marketing Power Summit in New York City.

"Our CEO, Mike [Zaneis], is very fond of saying, 'Why would you want single-filtered water when you could have triple-filtered water?' That's really exactly what TAG accomplishes," Thomas explained. "Your inventory, your transaction is being filtered and scanned and corrected so many times down the supply chain that, when you are buying through a TAG-certified channel, we're seeing 84 percent reductions in fraud rates against the industry average. We're getting fraud rates down from 12 or 8 percent to 1.84 percent. But, again, only if everybody is participating. The even better news is, everybody's participating."

TAG's goal is focusing on and fixing the criminal activity that takes place inside a legitimate supply chain. The group focuses on fraud, piracy, and malware, as well as the transparency that's needed to make sure bad actors can't hide inside the complicated transactional system that the video ad industry has become.

To accomplish its goal, TAG rigorously screens all of its member companies and demands transparency at every stage.

"We don't work with any companies that we can't have pass our background check, so that we know that, when you look at the TAG registry of known companies, these are companies that are the real Disney or the real Procter or the real GroupM, so that you can be sure that you aren't working with a criminal spoofing a legitimate brand or pretending to be a legitimate supplier in this supply chain," Thomas said. "That verification, the Verified by TAG program, is the foundation under which all of our certification programs are built. Until you are verified by TAG, we will not work with you on certifying any of your business practices."

The industry created the current video ad fraud problem by letting the legitimate supply chain grow complicated and not demanding transparency. Only a rigorous insistence on clean transactions at every stage will solve the problem

For more from Thomas and TAG, watch the full Video Marketing Power Summit presentation below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzHEothVeak

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net