• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, November 2, 2015

Reflecting growing concern about brand safety and non-human traffic, marketers are also increasingly wary of running advertising on sites that publish pirated or counterfeit content, as these sites are more likely to employ deceptive, fraudulent practices.

To help combat Internet piracy and counterfeiting and bolster marketer confidence, the Trustworthy Accountability Group is joining forces with the Alliance for Audited Media to provide certification to legitimate publishers and advertising technology companies.

Under the terms of the agreement, TAG is authorizing the AAM to certify that companies are complying with TAG’s standards, set forth in its “Brand Integrity Program Against Piracy.”

As an independent validator, AAM will be able to bestow TAG’s stamp of approval on ad tech companies and platforms as “Digital Advertising Assurance Providers” (DAAPs), verifying that they have put TAG’s recommended anti-piracy measures in place.

The AAM and TAG noted that some big media agencies are already requiring their ad tech partners to become TAG-certified. For example, in September GroupM announced that all its partners, or their associated vendors, must become TAG-certified DAAPs by the first quarter of next year.

AAM has collaborated with TAG on a number of ad quality and anti-fraud initiatives, for example helping formulate standards to govern Web sites that derive traffic from third parties. At TAG’s request the AAM is also establishing a training program for compliance officers at TAG member companies, as called for by the new anti-fraud guidelines issued by the Media Rating Council last week.

The industry organization, official arbiter of media ratings in the U.S., highlighted a number of key points in the guidelines, including the requirement for enhanced internal controls covering employee behavior policies, partner qualification processes, analysis of acquired or paid traffic, periodic risk assessments, and the correct procedure for challenging a decision to remove invalid traffic.