March 6, 2025 - by Bill Duggan, EVP at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA)
How to ensure media investments are being handled safely and efficiently.
Programmatic can be a black box.
The recently released Adalytics report alleges that major advertisers had their programmatic ads placed on a website that hosts Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and such activity was not flagged by the brand safety vendors, setting off a wave of industry chatter.
This news further puts a light on the very real issues that can arise when programmatic is not done carefully and thoughtfully. At its best, programmatic offers a variety of benefits including the precision to target the right audience and substantial cost efficiencies through automation.
But programmatic can be opaque and murky. Its complexity intimidates some advertisers and that stops them from asking questions for fear of “sounding stupid.” As industry pundit Bob Hoffman has said, advertisers “have no idea what they are buying; no idea what they are paying; no idea who they are buying from; and no idea what they are getting.” Good grief.
The industry should have the goal of zero tolerance for ads appearing next to CSAM content or advertising with companies that allow CSAM content on their sites. One ad is one too many. There are key guidelines provided in our Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study that are worth revisiting here, given this issue.
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