The Association of National Advertisers is going after digital media from Amazon, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Foursquare because they do not have independent audits of ad campaigns.
“Embrace the transparency,” said Bill Duggan, exec VP, ANA. The ANA polled its members from the ad industry, and virtually all of them viewed independent audits of digital media as positive. The rest were neutral or likely had some privacy concerns about tracking consumers, Mr. Duggan said.
A K2 Intelligence study, conducted on behalf of the ANA from October 2015 to May 2016, reported that numerous non-transparent business practices were found to be pervasive in a sample of the U.S. media ad-buying ecosystem.
“We outlined specific actions marketers should consider to diminish or eliminate non-transparent and non-disclosed agency activities and to ensure that their media management processes are optimized,” said Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the ANA.
Google and Facebook now agree to audits by the Media Rating Council, an advertising watchdog group. The rating council can authenticate ad campaign data – audience size and other measurements that determine rates and eschews the platform’s or publisher’s individual analysis.
Years – if not decades – of abuse by digital media online ads with fraudulent or inflated traffic claims and ambiguous view-ability standards about how the ads actually appear on screens, have caused national advertisers to demand changes.
