• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, May 13, 2014

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) on Tuesday announced that 29 digital companies have been certified under the revised IAB Quality Assurance Guidelines program (QAG 2.0). The IAB updated its guidelines in 2013 with a focus on programmatic and a desire to include more than just networks and exchanges.

The guidelines of the ad quality program can be found here. The certification essentially stamps buyers and sellers as digital companies that are aware of, and plan for, brand safety and transparency issues.

Included in the newly certified companies are publishers, networks, exchanges, supply-side platforms (SSPs), demand-side platforms (DSPs), agency trading desks and other ad tech companies.

"Brands care about trust in the media they purchase, first and foremost," said Mike Zaneis, executive vice president and general counsel, IAB. "The creation of a standard to allow marketers to buy based upon viewability will increase transparency in the marketplace and improve the measurement of advertising campaigns. The QAG program also increases transparency into certain ad inventory, but with a focus on providing trust for brands that they will only appear on sites that promote the same ideals as the marketer itself."

The 29 companies certified as QAG 2.0 compliant are:

“These companies are proving themselves to be critical leaders when it comes to brand safety and fighting copyright infringement,” Zaneis said in an earlier statement. “The more interactive advertising businesses that are certified under the QAG 2.0 program, the closer the industry gets to establishing the kind of high-quality, transparent and trustworthy marketplace that will drive greater brand dollars to digital.”

Additionally, the IAB highlighted eight digital ad sell-side companies that are in the process of gaining QAG 2.0 accreditation. These companies are: