• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 1, 2015

The ad industry's Trustworthy Accountability Group has tapped Interactive Advertising Bureau executive Mike Zaneis to serve as the organization's new president and CEO. Zaneis, who has been interim CEO since taking over from Linda Woolley in March, says he will leave the Interactive Advertising Bureau once the organization hires his replacement.

The Trustworthy Accountability Group -- created last year by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers, and the IAB -- tackles issues including online ad fraud, piracy and malware.

“We are focused on taking the fight to the criminals,” says Zaneis, who currently serves as the IAB's executive vice president for public policy and general counsel.

Earlier this year, the Trustworthy Accountability Group unveiled a program to “validate” companies that offer anti-piracy services to ad agencies and marketers. That voluntary initiative calls for quality assurance companies like DoubleVerify, among others, to be certified by outside auditors, including Ernst & Young and Stroz Friedberg. Auditors will assess whether the quality-assurance companies have criteria to identify sites at risk of offering pirated content, and can enable marketers and agencies to wield control over whether their ads appear on those sites.

The Trustworthy Accountability Group is still “working to operationalize” that program, Zaneis says.

The organization also recently announced plans to combat bot fraud by creating a database of domains that have been identified as known sources of fraudulent ad traffic.

In March, the group named a 24-person board of directors, including marketers, ad agency executives and representatives from ad trade groups. Board members include JCPenney Chief Marketing Officer Debra Berman, Wall Street Journal sales executive Trevor Fellows and McDonald's USA Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl.

Zaneis, who came to the IAB in 2007, founded the organization's Washington, D.C. public policy office and served as its first in-house lobbyist.