ACCC highlights importance of 3rd party verification

On Monday, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released its Digital Platforms Inquiry Preliminary Report with a list of recommendations and matters for further assessment around privacy, media transparency, ad fraud and measurement verification.
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The digital advertising ecosystem is complex and opaque. Every click on an ad passes through any number of intermediaries before reaching the ad destination, including the intermediaries mentioned in the ACCC’s report – SSPs, ad exchanges etc.
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This complexity has been the petri dish enabling ad fraud and various related criminal schemes to flourish. No business advertising online is immune to ad fraud. Businesses of all sizes and their traffic sources are impacted.
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It is great to see the ACCC taking an active step to address the various problems that stem from a lack of transparency in the digital media landscape.
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TrafficGuard was born out of the growing demand for fraud prevention in the digital advertising space and also the need for 3rd party verification. Our mission is to drive trust and transparency in the digital advertising ecosystem.
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Where most solutions are focused just on helping advertisers reclaim ad spend wasted on fraud, we are laser-focused on developing tools and changing mindsets to protect the whole ecosystem – not just the advertiser. Transparency is key to this process and is essential in our efforts towards:
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1. Preventing fraud before it occurs;
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2. Making the business model of ad fraud unfeasible; and
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3. Eradicating fraud to the benefit of advertising performance for advertisers as well as the various supply intermediaries.
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True transparency maintains trust between advertisers and their traffic suppliers to build a stronger digital advertising ecosystem.
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When digital platforms implement their own fraud prevention measures it demonstrates their commitment to quality, but ultimately is like having the fox guard the henhouse. For complete transparency in digital advertising, it is vital to have impartial quality assurance.
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The measures outlined by ACCC to ensure that 3rd party verification is accessible and effective will help big players become more accountable and make the industry less susceptible to fraud.

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