ACPM France launches DIGITAL AD TRUST
The SRI, UDECAM, GESTE, UDA, ARPP and IAB France have launched the "Digital Ad Trust", an interprofessional initiative intended to assess and enhance the quality of websites committed to responsible practices in advertising. The process for first-time candidates looking to obtain the label is now open.
THE FIRST ROUND OF LABELLING EXPECTED FOR MARCH 2018
The ACPM and CESP have been commissioned by interprofessional organisations to act as "third party accreditors". From now on, website publishers making the request will be able to begin the certification process. The ACPM and CESP are, therefore, already able to carry out the necessary collection of information, monitoring and audits required for obtaining the label. These audits will be exclusively based on independent measures from third parties certified by the Media Rating Council (MRC) or, in the long term, by the European Viewability Certification Framework (EVCF). The first list of the labelled sites will be made public in March 2018.
To apply: Labeldat@acpm.fr
A GUARANTEE FOR THE DIGITAL ADVERTISING ECOSYSTEM
Dedicated to websites (desktop and mobile, but excluding apps), this label promotes and increases the legibility of best practices by way of 5 key objectives:
- guarantee brand safety: to ensure that the environments in which brands appear are secure,
- optimise visibility of online advertising,
- combat fraud,
- improve the user experience (UX),
- better inform Internet users about the protection of personal data.
Consult details for the Digital Ad Trust label
The aim of this approach is to respond to the needs expressed by the entire ecosystem about responsible advertising, namely:
- Internet users looking for increased browsing comfort and respect for privacy;
- advertisers and their agencies looking to express clear and certified commitments to the security and quality of advertising campaigns;
- website publishers seeking to better qualify and increase the status of their brands, content and commercial offers.
A KEY TREND IN DIGITAL ADVERTISING
Local, regional or international initiatives are on the rise, emphasising and harmonising those practices aimed at greater transparency and control (Coalition for Better Ads, ARPP, IAB recommendations, etc.). The Digital Ad Trust decision-making committee, bringing together the interprofessional whole, fully subscribes to such efforts and has also chosen to base several label criteria upon them.
It is also for this reason that the decision-making committee of Digital Ad Trust has been chosen to represent France within the European Viewability Steering Group (EVSG). This is the European steering group for the certification initiative, launched by IAB Europe, the EACA and WFA, to apply fair and consistent European standards to the visibility of digital advertising.
Find out more about the E VSG and E V CF
For Jean-Baptiste Rouet, President of Udecam's Digital Commission, "The launch of the Digital Ad Trust Label into the French market is excellent news for our industry and offers far more stringent accreditation criteria than those of our European or American neighbours. It recognises the cooperative work between different players including advertisers, publishers and agencies around a shared vision for advertising which is responsible, transparent and consumer-friendly."
"One year after having announced Digital Ad Trust, we are pleased that this project has garnered the support of all interprofessional organisations. This label must be the best response to major issues in the market, by offering guarantees of trust, quality and transparency. The solid commitments that we are making alongside publishers and producers through this label reinforce our offers and structure our advertising practices to create a robust and certified alternative to the dominance of the Web giants." says Sophie Poncin, President of the SRI.
According to Jean-Luc Chetrit, Director General of the UDA: "Many excesses have developed from the sprawling market of Internet advertising. They weaken brands, create mistrust in Internet users, destabilise the economic models of content producers and reduce the effectiveness of advertiser investments. As publishers, producers, agencies and advertisers, we have all come together to react by creating a universe of advertising which respects Internet users and brands. The UDA is very pleased to participate in the development of the Digital Ad Trust. This new label will quickly become a marker of safety and quality for advertisers."
"The Label Digital Ad Trust is a natural extension of the actions led by the IAB since its creation: pioneer of the definition of advertising formats, promoter of the YOC (Your Online Choices) initiative, designer of the LEAN (Light, Encrypted, Adchoice, Non-invasive) programme, and author behind the launch of the new portfolio of IAB formats. Participation in this French initiative confirms our unfailing commitment, through new protocols such as Ads.txt and Open RTB 3.0, in order to promote responsible and transparent market practices.
IAB France is pleased to be part of the labelling process in the spirit of sharing both its international expertise and its dedicated involvement in European regulatory discussions." David Lacombled, President of IAB France.
Stéphane Martin, Director General of the ARPP (French advertising self-regulatory organisation), welcomes the fact that the "Digital Ad Trust Label is based on the commitments made by professionals in adopting and updating their ARPP ethical rules related to the content of messages and the acceptability of commercial communication. The Observatory's frame of reference for digital advertising practices, which decision-making professional organisations have entrusted to the ARPP, and for which they are also the administrators, has benefited in turn from these collective advances, which reinforce the responsible approach of self-regulation in advertising that respects consumers and entrepreneurs."
"The reference criteria of the Digital Ad Trust have been developed in a manner during interprofessional workshops with advertisers, agencies, publishers, producers and associations. The discussions were intense, but we succeeded, in a rather limited amount of time, to find a consensus on binding criteria for publishers and their production departments. I am pleased that the CESP was chosen, in tandem with the ACPM, to label sites that are committed to responsible advertising" explains Valérie Morrisson, Director General of the CESP.
"The CPMA, a trusted third-party certification body for the French media, is proud to have been chosen, in association with the CESP, to label the quality of sites and their content to give advertisers and media agencies all the confidence they need", Stéphane Bodier, Vice President of the CPMA.
About the SRI
The SRI was created in July 2003 upon the initiative of the principal French advertising networks to promote and develop Internet media in France. The approach of the SRI: supporting investments and the development of Internet media, valuing the specificities and competitiveness of the media, facilitating access to Internet media through professionalisation and the simplification of the tender process, drawing upon the creativity of the media and ensuring trade union representation with respect to all the players involved in interactive advertising.
366, 3W Régie, Amaury Media, Altice Media Publicité, AOL, Boursorama, Caradisiac Publicité, Dailymotion Advertising, France Télévisions Publicité, Freewheel, GMC Media, LagardeĢre Active Publicité, Leboncoin, M Publicité-Régie Obs, M6 Publicité Digital, MEDIA.figaro, Meltygroup, Mondadori, Next Régie, NRJ Global, Orange Advertising, Purch, Prisma Media Solutions, SeLoger, Teads, Team Media, TF1 Publicité Digital, and Yahoo! are all members of the SRI. www.sri-france.org
About the UDECAM
The UDECAM or Union des Entreprises de Conseil et Achat Media (France's union of media consulting and buying companies), brings together 28 media agencies, architects of marketing tool strategies serving the branding and business objectives of brands.
The Udecam brings together: DentsuAegis Network (Carat and Vizeum), Agence 79, Anacrouse, Ecrans & Media, Fifty Five, Havas Media (MPG and Arena), GroupM (KR Media, Mediacom, MEC, Mindshare), Mediabrands, Mediakeys, Mediatrack, Neo@ogilvy, Oconnection, OmnicomMediaGroup (OMD, PhD, Fuse), Poster Conseil, Publicis Media (Zenith, Starcom, Blue 449), Re-mind, Repeat
Since 1996, this association has been a forum for dialogue and consultation with different media and communication partners and between staff at the agencies. It values above and below the line marketing, defends the collective interests of its members and represents them with all the market players: public authorities, professional and interprofessional organisations, media, advertisers and decision makers. www.udecam.fr
About the GESTE
The GESTE federates the major publishers of online content and services, from all areas: media, music platforms, small adverts, mobile and voice services… all working towards the same objective: the establishment of a lasting and fair ecosystem.
The GESTE, a channel for exchange and vigilance, allows its members to make progress on business debates and legislative deliberations. Legislation: ePrivacy/RGPD, SSO solutions, data leakage, audio, digital, e-sport, personal assistants, etc. Concrete and applicable solutions for economic development are discussed before being submitted to the government and public bodies. www.geste.fr
About the ARPP
Created in 1935, the ARPP or Autorité de Régulation Professionnelle de la Publicité (France's professional advertising regulatory authorities) is the unique French organisation of self-regulatory advertising.
Chaired by an "independent government official", Mr François d'Aubert, since 4 November 2011, the ARPP brings together three advertising and communication players in general
: advertisers, communication agencies, media agencies, advertising media and materials, producers and providers of the advertising value chain.
Funded entirely by its members (approximately 645 contributing companies and nearly 790 member companies), who set their ethical rules, the ARPP work each day to preserve the freedom of creative advertising services within the agreed limits and the protection of consumers.
To this end, the ARPP has comprised its Board of Directors of three representatives from the profession, three associated upstream and downstream bodies of advertising ethics: the Conseil de l’Ethique Publicitaire (CEP), the Conseil Paritaire de la Publicité (CPP) and the Jury de Déontologie Publicitaire (JDP). www.arpp.org
About the UDA (Union des annonceurs)
Founded in 1916, the UDA, in France, is the representative organisation of advertisers, in other words, companies using different techniques of communication to promote their products, services, reputation or image. It has 6,000 members, within its 200 member companies, of all sizes, statuses and sectors. The missions of the UDA are: to promote the interests and positions of advertisers with respect to their professional interlocutors and their economic, social, and political environment, both French and European; to enable its members to optimise their communication investments in terms of effectiveness and cost; to promote responsible communication by developing and implementing fair and ethical practices. www.uda.fr
About IAB France
The IAB France (Interactive Advertising Bureau) is an association created in 1998 whose mission is threefold: to structure the digital communication market, promote its use and maximise its effectiveness. It currently has 140 member companies, representing all the players involved in the chain of interactive communication (publishers, producers, agencies, advertisers, research institutes, technology suppliers, etc.). Through its publications, studies and the events it organises, IAB France supports advertisers and their consulting agencies to help them effectively integrate digital media in their global marketing strategy and IAB plans to propose standards as examples of professional practices to new players integrating the digital market.
The IAB is also a network of experts serving other professional organisations, institutions and media concerned with the impact of the development of this new economic landscape. IAB France is an independent entity, forming part of the global network of affiliates making up the Interactive Advertising Bureau. www.iabfrance.com
Why Digital Ad Fraud Needs to Be Addressed First
Fraud impacts all downstream measurements. Learn some practical tips for bringing confidence back to digital advertising.
Brian Condon, Executive Vice President, Commercial Development
Digital advertising faces many issues—fraud, brand safety, viewability—that all make headlines. Juniper Research estimates that advertisers will lose $51 million per day on ad fraud in 2018, totaling $19 billion over the year. This reality is causing many marketers to rethink and reallocate their ad spends. But since all the issues impact how ROI is measured, which one should be addressed first?
The answer is ad fraud. If the customer journey doesn’t start with a human interacting with the ad, all downstream measurements are flawed.
Ad Fraud Must Be Acknowledged Upfront to Give Marketers Confidence
Everyone in the industry—buyer and seller—has a responsibility to fight against ad fraud. Here are four practical steps for publishers and marketers:
Publishers:
1. Adhere to Best Practices
Know your business practices for monetizing your site, sourcing traffic and choosing vendors, and educate your staff on best practices as well.
2. Use Accredited Vendors
Implement tech to prohibit ads from being served to known bots.
3. Actively Manage Media Monetization
Dedicate staff to review traffic patterns and sources.
4. Understand Traffic Sources
Revisit and scrutinize current traffic sourcing practices.
Marketers:
1. Know Who You Do Business With
It’s important to have confidence that you’re buying on legitimate websites. Use whitelists to prioritize your media buys and execute those buys through private marketplaces or directly with publishers.
2. Actively Manage Media Investments
Dedicate staff to managing placement reports and ask for site-level detail about the campaigns you run.
3. Require a Higher Level of Accountability
Hold your media partners accountable by asking them to implement ads.txt, get audited and use accredited vendors.
4. Focus on Outcomes
Know the limitations of your measurements. Recognize that ad fraud measurement doesn’t eliminate ad fraud.
How AAM is Helping in the Fight Against Ad Fraud
The main advertising associations in North America—the Association of National Advertisers and Association of Canadian Advertisers—asked AAM to develop a digital publisher audit program to minimize digital ad fraud. Independent, third-party publisher auditing has minimized fraud in other forms of media and has the potential to transform the digital ad market.
AAM’s Quality Certification program reduces digital ad fraud by differentiating good publishers and ensuring they are doing everything they can to serve marketers’ ads to humans.
AAM reviews the publisher’s processes, practices and procedures as part of a continuous audit that monitors site activity 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to ensure consistent practices are followed. Publishers must promptly remediate any issues that are discovered during monitoring.
Learn more about ad fraud and AAM Quality Certification by downloading the whitepaper: 3 Truths That Help Confront the Ad Fraud Crisis.
The Relationship Between News Media Data, Audits and CPMs
AAM: How does BlueSoHo use news media data from AAM?
Kurt Kopinski: BlueSoHo uses a proprietary database that houses circulation for more than 9,000 media vendors. By far, the most important data element in that database is circulation by ZIP code. Quarterly reporting from AAM has also been helpful in ensuring we have the most up-to-date information.
We get the data directly from AAM and import it into the database where we can run queries. The audit is used as a verified, reliable quality check to make sure that the data makes sense. It’s critically important to know that the newspapers are reporting correctly.
AAM: What happens when you have all the data gathered?
Kurt Kopinski: The data is used for planning purposes. It gives us information about the distribution of any one newspaper. If we’re developing a plan for a specific store, we build a data-driven methodology with our client’s approval to determine the right footprint. Then we use the database to determine the right distribution products that best align with the methodology.
We want verified counts to have the confidence that we’re building the right media buy. We know that when we execute the media buy, it won’t be exactly the right quantities, but it gets us in the ballpark, and our insertion order verification process can account for recent adjustments.
AAM: How do unaudited publications factor into your plans?
Kurt Kopinski: If a newspaper is unaudited, we can’t verify and feel confident in their numbers. We’re often less inclined to recommend and use products from unaudited sources.
I’m concerned that publications feel that there’s no need for an audit. I suspect publishers feel like we take it for granted, and no one ever asks them for an audit. The data is delivered to us directly. We actively use the audited data. It’s critically important for us as stewards of our client’s media program to feel confident that their ad goes out and reaches their customers. The audit is a key component in that confidence.
AAM: When a newspaper goes unaudited, does that effect the price you’re willing to pay?
Kurt Kopinski: If we use an unaudited product, our approach often is to ask for and accept a lower CPM as we cannot be assured that the quantity being asked for is actually reaching our customers. Our clients have all become extremely ROI driven with their media plans and need to make certain the ROI will be there.
BlueSoHo is an integrated marketing agency providing multi-channel marketing solutions to publishers, retailers and healthcare providers. The agency is also one of the top users of news media data in AAM’s Media Intelligence Center and receives a customized data feed integration. In a recent interview, Kurt Kopinski, vice president, client services, explains why they spend so much time with data, how it impacts CPMs and why they might not ask a newspaper for an audit.
Trust equals money, annual AMAA research reveals
The latest third-party annual research conducted on behalf of AMAA shows media channel trust is a key influencer in media investment, with 86% of industry respondents agreeing that where there is trust, there is more willingness to spend.
The Trust Equation study also revealed that 8 in10 marketers and media agencies prioritise media channels that supply transparent, audited data.
“Trust is the invisible thread that influences media buying decisions. Advertising trading doesn’t run solely on analytics and money – it also runs on trust. The 310 marketers and media professionals who completed our survey provided feedback on the issues affecting trust levels and how the industry can step up to collectively address them,” AMAA CEO Josanne Ryan said.
Whilst proof of performance and cross-media audience metrics remained the top two industry concerns, awareness of Ad Fraud increased more than any other industry issue – up 17% year-on-year to 44%. And it is independent industry bodies that should be taking the lead with solutions according to 72% of respondents.
When it comes to digital channels, there was an across-the-board increase in the desire for more industry oversight to build trust – the top channels noted were programmatic trading, social media, online video/streaming and mobile.
The impetus for increased programmatic trading transparency is intensified with the survey indicating that more than half of online media will be bought programmatically within three years.
Programmatic is clearly on the radar of agencies, with a much higher proportion of agency respondents - 80% compared to 32% of marketers - indicating that this channel needs to build trust.
The industry also recognised the role of marketers as the leaders of change with three-quarters of respondents agreeing that the industry issues of transparency and accountability need their focus.
Key insights:
• Trust = Money with 86% of respondents agreeing ‘where there is trust, there is more willingness to spend’;
• Verification is at the heart of the trust equation as 80% prioritised transparent, audited channels;
• Programmatic and Social Media are idnetified as being the channels most in need of oversight to build trust with Social Media rising the most – up 32% year-on-year;
• In terms of areas the industry needs to address Proof of Perfomarnce and Cross-Media Measurement remain the top priorities but Ad Fraud recorded the biggest increase – up 17% year-on-year to 44%;
• 72% agreed industry bodies should be driving industry solutions to address ad fraud;
• In terms of potential governance frameworks to assist the industry, 89% rated as important industry certification of programmatic desks and ad exchanges as meeting best practice;
• 75% agree the issues the industry faces in transparency and accountability will only get fixed if marketers push for it
The study was conducted by independent research company The Insights Grill via an online survey of 310 marketers and media agency professionals conducted 1 February - 7 March 2017.
The mix of respondents was 45% clients and 55% media agency with 54% in digitally focused roles.
Click here to access a copy of the 2017 Trust Study: The Trust Equation.
The Audited Media Association of Australia (AMAA) is the industry’s accountability body governed by a representative Board from the media, marketing and media agency membership.
Scam impacting IFABC members
On Wednesday April 12, the AMAA in Australia was approached by phone by a scammer pretending to be one of our IFABC members, Dr Roberto Moreyra from Argentina requesting money to assist with organising visas for Australia. The caller also referred to our President as well.
Following a couple of hours of nearly constant calls and messages from the 'scammer' and some contact by the AMAA of fellow colleagues, namely Mr Hormuzd Masani from India, Matthews in Malaysia and finally Pedro Da Silva in Brazil we were able to ascertain this was indeed a scam and Dr Moreyra had no problem with travel or his family, or funds.
We have since found that many IFABC members were contacted across the world, claiming to be one or other member of the IFABC in urgent need of assistance and financial support to enable them to travel into a country to organise a family members repatriation.
Please note that if you receive any telephone calls or emails purporting to be from either Pedro or Roberto or other member of the IFABC requesting money to be sent to the Philippinges please disregard. IFABC members would not approach you in this way. Please check the email address that has been used and confirm using our members real email addresses.
regards
Heather Craven