A report revealed ad tech's failure to curb child sexual abuse material monetization, prompting industry leaders to call for greater vendor transparency. IAB CEO David Cohen urged a shift from efficiency-focused strategies to more effective measures against bad actors. This led to increased scrutiny of major ad verification companies, with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science pledging improvements. Amazon plans to enhance transparency through new reporting tools and issued refunds to advertisers impacted by the findings, while Google is under scrutiny yet has taken steps to remove offending sites and offer refunds.
"Instead of pointing fingers, it may make sense to talk about the misalignment of incentives ... move the conversation from efficiency at all costs to effectiveness and starve bad actors from monetization," he said in a LinkedIn statement.
The fallout from the report amounted to an "emperor has no clothes" moment for the big brand safety vendors, signaling a keen awareness of the shortcomings in ad tech.
Amazon plans to add more transparency tools to its platform, introducing new page-level reporting through its Traffic Events API, along with refunds to affected advertisers.
Google hasn't publicly confirmed plans to overhaul DV 360's granularity, but it has demonetized offending sites and reportedly issued refunds after the Adalytics report findings.
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