Ad Industry Group Joins The Fight Against Fraudsters

The Trustworthy Accountability Group, an initiative created on behalf of the advertising industry to combat online criminal activity in digital advertising, announced yesterday (Oct. 29) the launch of its industry-wide anti-fraud program called Verified by TAG.

Verified by TAG is aimed at not only fighting digital ad fraud but also increasing transparency throughout the online advertising landscape by implementing the TAG Registry of legitimate advertisers and publishers and the upcoming launch of a Payment ID system to connect those receiving payments for ads to the ad inventory directly.

“The TAG Registry and upcoming Payment ID system will act like a ‘two-factor authentication’ for the digital ad supply chain,” TAG CEO Mike Zaneis said in a press release. “Through the TAG Registry, buyers will be able to ensure that they are working with trusted parties at every step of their campaigns, while the Payment ID system will ensure that payments only go to legitimate players, choking off the cash to criminals. These programs will serve as the cornerstone of TAG’s anti-fraud efforts by providing transparency across the digital ad ecosystem. Registration is now open, and it’s time for every company in digital advertising to get TAG’ed.”

[bctt tweet=”Advertising industry fights back against fraud with ‘two-factor authentication’ anti-fraud initiative “]

Companies interested in applying to become verified by TAG as a trusted advertiser can apply to the TAG Registry now. Once verified, companies are issued a TAG identifier which can be shared with partners to identify all ads they run, buy, process or place as legitimate.

As TAG continues to develop its Payment ID system, the organization confirmed it is collaborating with leading companies in the programming space to ensure the program reaches its goal of creating a record of the transactions for legitimate ads to stop cybercriminals from profiting off ad spend.

Scott Spencer, Product Management Director at Google and Chairman of the TAG Anti-Fraud Working Group, said: “Ad fraud is a solvable problem. If the industry continues to work together on projects like this, we can prevent illegitimate sites and traffic providers from taking spend from the ecosystem and help legitimate publishers earn the revenue to support their businesses.”

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