Freedom Line Blog

This month, GroupM, the world’s leading media investment management company, announced that it will now require its media partners advertising on websites to receive anti-piracy certification from the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG).  This new initiative will go far to keep its clients’ advertisements off of rogue websites, as GroupM summarized in its announcement:

‘We’re in the business of giving the world’s most valuable brands marketing advantages with smart media strategies.  This inherently means we’re vigilant for clients’ brand safety.  Our work with TAG in the development and full adoption of anti-piracy guidelines is a major leap forward,’ said John Montgomery, Chairman, GroupM Connect, North America and Co-Chair of the TAG Anti-Piracy Working Group.  ‘With IAB, 4As, and ANA, we’ve worked for years to make the digital ecosystem more trustworthy.  Fighting pirates of copyrighted content required every ounce of our tenacity and ingenuity, but with the advent of TAG’s Brand Integrity Program Against Piracy, we have powerful new tools and safeguards.'”

Such advertising on piracy sites accounted for an estimated $209 million in ill-gotten revenue in 2014 alone, so this constitutes a significant, voluntary private sector milestone.  Summarizing the nature of the problem, Mr. Montgomery observed:

There’s no brand in the world that wants their advertising to appear on a pirate site or wants to be seen as supporting piracy, even inadvertently…  A brand’s entire reputation is at stake – something that they’ve been nurturing for decades or, in some cases, centuries.  The people who create pirate sites are the same ones who perpetrate clickbait fraud – they’re the ones who spread malware and create armies of bots that generate most of the automated clicks in the business…  Which is why being worried about ad fraud without also being aware of the role piracy plays in its perpetration is like fretting over a flood in your apartment while neglecting to turn off the tap.”

Hopefully, other ad industry players will follow GroupM’s lead in utilizing TAG, but CFIF and anyone who supports the rule of law and property rights – including intellectual property (IP) rights – owe them an enormous “thank you.”  Accordingly, please click here to join us in thanking them.