The Association of National Advertisers is calling on “walled garden” digital platforms—which it defines as “a platform where the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applications or content”—to allow the Media Ratings Council to perform independent audits.
A release calls out Twitter, Amazon, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat and Amazon specifically, while also noting that “many large digital enterprises are walled gardens.”
In a statement, the ANA said, “The ANA calls on these organizations to embrace transparency and ‘break down their walled gardens’ by allowing independent audits by the Media Rating Council.”
The ANA notes that Facebook and Google-owned YouTube are already in the process of receiving MRC accreditation, adding that it “applauds” the recent announcements.
The statement follows an ANA survey which found 90 percent of participants in support of the idea of independent audits for such platforms. In the words of one respondent: “The more transparency we have from vendors on data and performance, the greater advertisers can trust the platform.”