Ad Tech Watchdogs Form Nonprofit With Plans to Uproot the ‘Disinformation Economy'

It's no secret that the ad tech industry has a transparency problem. An estimated 15% of digital ad dollars vanish into the so-called "unknown delta." And advertisers are consistently finding themselves surprised by the places their ads end up. A nonprofit launched this week by two of the industry's most outspoken brand safety advocates aims to clear the cloudy pools engulfing ad placements. Over the past couple years, marketers Nandini Jammi and Claire Atkin have spent a lot of time exploring the murky world of ad tech—first through their newsletter, Branded, and then with their for-profit brand safety consulting company, Check My Ads. Now, they're going a step further. Targeting the 'ATM of the disinformation economy' Announced this week, the Check My Ads Institute is the ad-tech industry's latest nonprofit watchdog, devoted to policing ad fraud and the promotion of hate speech. Its goal is to hold industry leaders accountable and redirect ad dollars from "bad faith publishers," a blanket term used for fake news websites engaged in ad fraud or those peddling misinformation and conspiracy theories, to journalism and trusted media sources. https://twitter.com/CheckMyAdsHQ/status/1453249910824787969?s=20 To do that, they're digging into what they're calling the "ATM of the disinformation economy:" the digital advertising supply chain. "The work that we do will definitely be helping advertisers keep their ads away from from disinformation and hate," Jammi explained. "But more importantly, we think that the work that we do is going to empower them to make better marketing decisions across the board." The nonprofit is soliciting public and corporate support through subscriptions and donations. Subscribers, called "Checkmates," will get special access to live chats, webinars and investigations. Jammi and Atkin also are creating a podcast as part of the new venture, called Immeasurable, which will be out in early 2022. Subscriptions start at $10 per month. "We want to take $2 billion out of the disinformation economy and we need everyone on board," added Atkin. Investigating the monetary ties between so-called bad faith publishers and brands is something that Jammi started doing as co-founder of Sleeping Giants. That campaign began after the 2016 election to call out brands for advertising on white supremacist websites. Then, working with Atkin, the two dug deeper into how brands were continually finding their ads on sites that either didn't align with their values, or that weren't legitimate publishers. Through Check My Ads, which Jammi and Atkin founded together last August, they work directly with brands to analyze their ad spend to root out fraud and links to sites that peddle disinformation. Then, they work with trusted publishers to make sure their ad dollars end up with websites that those brands want to support. The Check My Ads Institute will largely "eclipse" the for-profit venture, Atkin said, though they'll still try to take on clients who they believe will make a significant impact on the overall industry. The transparency problem is one the ad tech industry has been attempting to solve through better tech. In June, the IAB Tech Lab announced a new service called Supply Chain Validation, which automatically matches information listed in two publicly available files: ads.txt and sellers.json. The goal is to bring more accountability to the ad-tech supply chain by giving buyers and sellers more accurate information about the intermediaries involved in an online ad auction. By contrast, Check My Ads manually looks through these documents to find fraud—a process it argues is necessary to avoid the kind of large-scale gaps in transparency the industry's currently facing. "The ad-tech industry has made marketing a 'set it and forget it' relationship between marketers and their campaigns," Atkin said. "We think that advertisers could do better." Sleeping Giants Co-Founder Takes Next Step in Fixing Advertising