TAG Launches TAG TrustNet in partnership with Fiducia

After extensive evaluation and consultation, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is pleased to announce the launch of TAG TrustNet, a new phase of TAG’s ongoing Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) initiative.

We are excited to move forward in applying this exciting emerging technology to real-world challenges faced by the TAG Community, and the digital advertising industry as a whole. Focused on two key industry challenges, TAG TrustNet will work to build trust and transparency across the supply chain by establishing a common “truth” on metrics that will improve the efficiency of reporting for all stakeholders, including the verification of TAG certification status for inventory, strengthening the industry’s fight against ad fraud and other brand safety concerns.

The launch of TAG TrustNet follows a twelve-month cross-industry pilot program initiated by JICWEBS, prior to its merger with TAG, and a subsequent industry consultation led by TAG with UK partners to evaluate the feasibility and benefits of DLT to increase trust and transparency in digital advertising.

Going forward, TAG plans to continue to work with technology partner Fiducia in its efforts to standardize a DLT infrastructure for the industry, so that TAG TrustNet and future DLT efforts can avoid confusion, miscommunication, and conflicting standards. Fiducia’s open-source platform has received strong positive recognition for providing an industry template, and we look forward to a continued partnership with them.

Beyond Fiducia and industry partners, a number of brands and agencies have expressed interest in participating in TAG TrustNet, and TAG welcomes inquiries and engagement from potential new partners who would like to explore this valuable and exciting opportunity. Interested parties can contact Adrian Lacey at adrian@tagtoday.net

About the Trustworthy Accountability Group

The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is the leading global certibication program bighting criminal activity and increasing trust in the digital advertising industry. Created by leading US industry trade organizations, TAG’s mission is to eliminate fraudulent trafbic, combat malware, prevent Internet piracy, and promote greater transparency in digital advertising. TAG advances those initiatives by bringing companies across the digital advertising supply chain together to set the highest standards. TAG is the birst and only registered Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO) for the digital advertising industry. For more information on TAG, please visit www.tagtoday.net

TAG LAUNCHES INDUSTRY CONSULTATION FOLLOWING SUCCESSFUL DLT PILOT

Register for the TAG DLT network industry consultation kick-off event

The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), formerly JICWEBS, jointly with ISBA, IPA, IAB UK and AOP, launches a 5 week industry consultation following a successful one-year pilot for the launch of a collaborative network using a blockchain – or Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) – platform as an always-on solution to drive accountability and business efficiency. 

To kick-off the consultation the TAG Townhall is taking place on Thursday 1st October at 3pm (GMT+1) duration 1 hour

to attend please REGISTER HERE

The event is hosted by Jules Kendrick, Managing Director UK & Europe, TAG and Adrian Lacey, Head of the Piot Evaluation Committee and Director of Policy and Standards, TAG. 

The purpose of the industry consultation, running from October 1 to November 5, 2020, is to provide you with the opportunity to: 

1. Learn more about the initiative and your Benefits 

2. Provide your Input to best shape the network to your needs 

3. Understand how you can Participate in the proposed network

4. And importantly, contribute your company's views to assist us in deciding What to do next

The TAG Townhall will kick-off the consultation with a reminder of the project milestones and achievements, and provide the details of the consultation process. This will include the access to the Consultation Document and Pilot Executive Summary.

Supporting webinars providing background information about DLT and the initiative can be accessed below. These webinars are not part of the consultation and are only intended to provide background information.​

London Tech Week - Where Advertising meets Technology CreaTech webinar - Sep 7, 2020 (min 45:20) Jules Kendrick, MD UK & Europe, TAG Nigel Vaz, Global CEO, Publicis Sapient & IPA President  Tim Brown, CEO, Fiducia  

TAG DLT Network webinars:

1. Webinar 1 - What is the TAG DLT Network initiative all about? Jules Kendrick, MD UK & Europe, TAG (min 09:51)

2. Webinar 2 - Can DLT solve the industry trust problem? Gavin Stirrat, Industry Expert & Fiducia Consultant (min 16:31)

3. Webinar 3 - What radical changes is DLT driving across industries? Richard Brown, Chief Technology Officer, R3 / Corda (min 17:58)

4. Webinar 4 - How does a DLT platform work? Igor Alferov, Chief Technology Officer, Fiducia (min 17:30)

5. Webinar 5 - Why should I participate to the DLT Network? Phill Hayman, Customer Success Director, Fiducia (min 14:03)

The consultation comes after a pioneering 12 month pilot that ran from July 2019 to July 2020 with participants including major brands Nestlé, Telefonica/O2, McDonald’s, Virgin Media, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson; agency trading groups WPP, Publicis, OMG, Havas, IPG; and more than 15 prominent ad tech providers and publishers spanning every segment of the supply chain. 

The Pilot allowed its Evaluation Committee, formed by 20 industry experts(1) representing all sides of the industry, to determine: 

1. That DLT is particularly well suited to address the trust, transparency and efficiency problems the industry is facing: providing an always-on immutable ad impression audit trails and the use of smart contracts to enhance accountability and compliance, while driving significant incremental business value and operational efficiencies for all value chain participants. 

2. That the initiative to set-up an industry consortium network using a DLT platform to enhance trust and transparency is in line with the mission of TAG/JICWEBS.  

3. That the specific requirements set for a DLT platform to power an industry consortium network in digital advertising - reconciling ad impression log files across supply chains, ensuring data immutability, security and privacy for a minimal cost - have been met. 

“Building a more transparent ecosystem requires both innovation and collaboration, and this initiative and pilot has demonstrated our industry’s commitment and desire to working together to evaluate new technologies,” said Jules Kendrick, Managing Director UK & Europe for TAG. “Our pilot showed promising opportunities for a DLT platform which we would like to share in this consultation process, including the potential to achieve a ‘Shared Truth’ where the same data is recognised as valid and accurate across the supply chain.” 

About the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) TAG is the leading global certification program fighting criminal activity and increasing trust in the digital advertising industry. Created by leading US industry trade organisations, TAG’s mission is to eliminate fraudulent traffic, combat malware, prevent Internet piracy, and promote greater transparency in digital advertising. TAG advances those initiatives by bringing companies across the digital advertising supply chain together to set the highest standards. TAG is the first and only registered Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO) for the digital advertising industry. For more information on TAG, please visit www.tagtoday.net

(1) The DLT Evaluation Committee was formed of representatives from: IBA, IPA, AOP, IAB UK, IAB Tech Lab, ABC, GroupM, Mediacom, Publicis Media, Seven Stars, Omnicom, eBay, Accenture, PwC, Wirehive, LDTRT, and some independent blockchain and industry experts. 

TAG announces successful completion of DLT Pilot, outlines next steps

Pilot Participants Included Nestle, McDonald’s, Virgin Media, O2/Telefonica, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson; GroupM, Havas, IPG, Mindshare, OMD, Zenith; 15+ Adtech Providers & Publishers

London, UK – 7 September 2020 – The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) today announce the successful completion of a twelve-month cross-industry pilot programme to evaluate the feasibility and potential benefits of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to increase trust and transparency in digital advertising. Launched by JICWEBS last year prior to its merger with TAG, the pilot included participants from major brands including Nestle, Telefonica/O2, McDonald’s, Virgin Media, Unilever and Johnson & Johnson; agencies including GroupM, Havas, IPG, Mindshare, OMD, and Zenith; and more than 15 prominent ad tech providers and publishers spanning nearly every segment of the supply chain. “Building a more transparent ecosystem requires both innovation and collaboration, and this pilot has demonstrated our industry’s commitment to working together to quickly and thoroughly evaluate new technologies,” said Jules Kendrick, Managing Director UK & Europe for TAG. “Our pilot showed promising opportunities for a DLT platform, including the potential to achieve a ‘Shared Truth’ where the same data is recognized as valid and accurate across the supply chain. We look forward to expanding our consultative efforts to help ensure that every participant in the supply chain can be sure that ‘what you see is what I see.’” The results of the pilot helped demonstrate the potential of DLT for: • Supply Chain Transparency – Despite log level data availability and inconsistency issues, the TAG DLT Pilot successfully validated the use of a DLT platform as a unified data and reporting layer for the industry. DLT harmonises impression log level data to a common format, automates data access management, ensures data immutability, security and privacy - data recorded in the ledger is only be accessed on a need-to know basis via encryption keys under the control of the data provider - and streamlines the access to supply chain reconciled log level data via a single API. • Supply Chain Optimisation – The Pilot allowed participants to use Shared Truth to validate the execution of campaigns against a set of metrics reconciled among multiple vendors including discrepancies, measurability, viewability, brand safety or fraud prevention metrics. The focus of the Pilot was more on the validation and reconciliation of impressions against qualitative and quantitative metrics and less on the financial values. For DLT reconciled impressions, 34% were categorised as non-qualified and/or non-viewable. • Operational Efficiencies – The DLT platform successfully tested how smart contracts can automate business processes between ad buyers and sellers providing significant operational efficiencies. Research conducted with agencies indicated that programmatic teams spend up to 60% of their time downloading, formatting and reconciling data, compared with just 20% analysing it. Additionally, 59% of respondents thought campaign reporting and reconciliation would benefit most from automation.

“To address difficult cross-industry challenges, TAG helps create a collaborative environment for companies to share new ideas, exchange information, and set common standards,” said Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG. “While DLT is still in its early stages, we believe this pilot not only highlights the potential for this type of technology but also the importance of working with stakeholders across industry to evaluate and find consensus on common standards.” To further evaluate both the opportunities and challenges facing a DLT industry consortium network, TAG plans to launch an industry consultation to share detailed information about the initiative and give stakeholders across the industry the opportunity to give their input to determine how best to move forward. Interested parties can contact TAG’s Director of Strategy and Standards, Adrian Lacey, for further details. The findings of the Pilot will be discussed at a CreaTech session ‘Where advertising meets technology’ on Monday (7 September at 12:40pm) as part of London Tech Week, featuring Jules Kendrick, MD UK and Europe, TAG; Fiducia CEO Tim Brown and IPA President and CEO of Publicis Sapient, Nigel Vaz. TAG partnered with London-based tech business FIDUCIA for the pilot, which ran from July 2019 to July 2020 and included 20 data feeds spanning Demand Side Platforms, Supply Side Platforms, Content Verification Tools, and Publishers. The pilot analysed 112 million impressions worth £1.4M across 127 campaigns. Reaction from participants: Nigel Vaz, IPA President and CEO Publicis Sapient: “For me the focus of this project is ultimately about digital advertising payments and reconciliation of the supply chain. While the internet made information accessible to everyone, we hope blockchain as a technology – and specifically DLT, as used in this pilot, will start to create accountability for the transactional aspects of the internet. “While driving efficiencies, it will also enable greater transparency in line with real, demanding regulatory requirements in a way that will allow us to regain the trust we’ve lost due to the evolving proliferation in this area.” Steven Pollock, Head of Media Communications for UK and Ireland, Nestlé: "Nestle is committed to being part of a transparent and accountable programmatic ecosystem. The JICWEBS DLT pilot is an important initiative in understanding how DLT can be a solution to many of the challenges that our market faces." Simon Reip, Head of Digital J3, UM (for Johnson & Johnson): “J&J and J3 are excited to be supporting the potentially groundbreaking JICWEBS DLT pilot, helping lay down the foundations to a more transparent programmatic ecosystem. Only together as a cross-industry consortium can we truly solve this problem, and it’s great to see so many partners willing to take part.” Mia Mulch, Deputy Managing Director, OMG Programmatic at Omnicom Media Group: “Omnicom Media Group UK and our agencies are committed to being part of a transparent and accountable programmatic ecosystem. The JICWEBs DLT pilot is one key initiative in the UK that is helping to solve many of the challenges that programmatic faces.” Vittorio Capasso, Partner Development Manager, Adform: "We believe the JICWEBS DLT initiative will help the industry to improve transparency and trust, tackling the challenge with an innovative approach that will debinitely result in new solutions. We are happy to contribute to this project as we are committed to create a trusted advertising environment" Bal Singh, Programmatic Sales Director – UK, Aufeminin Groupe / Netmums

"Here at Netmums we believe providing end to end supply chain transparency is a win-win for all legitimate parties within the supply chain and is therefore why we believe a cross industry approach such as the JICWEBS initiative is the best way forward. Not only will it allow our clients to maximise their ad spend and reduce fraud, but it will allow more revenue to blow to premium publishers such as ourselves enabling us to create more quality content for our users. This is why we see initiative as not only important for us, but crucial for the success of our entire ecosystem."

About the Trustworthy Accountability Group

The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is the leading global certibication program bighting criminal activity and increasing trust in the digital advertising industry. Created by leading US industry trade organizations, TAG’s mission is to eliminate fraudulent trafbic, combat malware, prevent Internet piracy, and promote greater transparency in digital advertising. TAG advances those initiatives by bringing companies across the digital advertising supply chain together to set the highest standards. TAG is the birst and only registered Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO) for the digital advertising industry. For more information on TAG, please visit tagtoday.net.