Both Amazon and Google told ADWEEK that they’ve blocked the site in question.
Two ad buyers at agencies and two at brands said they paid vendors including IAS and DoubleVerify for brand safety technology, and those vendors marked impressions on ibb.co or imgbb.com as entirely brand-safe.
IAS and DoubleVerify are under fire
IAS and DoubleVerify are the biggest firms that sell brand safety tech, with market caps of $1.73 billion and $3.67 billion respectively.
“Their tech quite simply does not do what they say it does,” said one of the buyers who spoke to ADWEEK on the condition of anonymity.
“The blame lies … with any verification company that even pretends to offer brand safety products that could [allow ads to] appear on something so horrific,” said Jay Friedman, CEO of independent media agency Goodway Group, who reviewed an advance copy of Adalytics’ report.
The industry bodies that certify vendors’ ad verification and safety practices are also being blamed. Both DoubleVerify and IAS have the TAG Brand Safety Certified Seal, signaling compliance with brand safety standards in digital advertising, as well as MRC certifications for meeting specific brand safety and suitability criteria.
Letters published Friday by Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal, written in response to Adalytics’ report, called out the certification organizations’ failures to protect advertisers’ interests and uphold their own standards: “TAG has failed to enforce its standards and investigate non-compliance, resulting in the continued funding of CSAM and other criminal activity for years.”
“A lot of the blame here is on MRC and TAG, who are certifying these vendors,” said Arielle Garcia, chief operating officer of adtech watchdog Check My Ads, who advised the lawmakers. “I cannot fathom that any advertiser would expect a certified vendor to allow their ads to serve on a site that hosted CSAM, and not at least notify them of the risk.”
Garcia believes TAG and MRC are complicit in the monetization of CSAM on imgbb.com and ibb.co.
TAG CEO Mike Zaneis said in a statement: “We have not been allowed to review this report, so we cannot comment on the accuracy of any claims made in it.”
MRC declined to comment on the record, but confirmed that IAS and DoubleVerify are only accredited for ad verification based on text and keywords, but not based on whether ads appear next to appropriate content.
Easy steps could prevent bad placements
Brand safety firms missed some obvious red flags that could have prevented ad buying on imgbb.com and ibb.co. For instance, the imgbb.com domain had been flagged by NCMEC.
“Brokers and ad network operators who onboard websites wanting to monetize web traffic can engage in much more robust KYC [Know Your Customer] practices when onboarding a website or platform,” said Jacques Marcoux, the director of research and analytics at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.