UK anti-ad fraud group calls for diligence checks
The UK Stop Ad-Funded Crime Group (UKSAFC) is launching a consultation on a forthcoming initiative to tackle ad fraud.
The Know Your Customer (KYC) initiative will invite all stakeholders within the programmatic advertising supply chain to carry out due diligence checks on every company they deal with.
Doing so will require they provide independent verification of companies’ names, registered addresses and phone numbers, directors and bank details.
In return, those that conduct due diligence will benefit from improved trust from advertisers, many of which are concerned that their adspend is being wasted or is funding unseemly content online.
“DSPs [demand-side platforms] have a duty to check the SSPs [supply-side platforms] they are dealing with and SSPs have a duty to check the publishers they are doing business with,” UKSAFC chair member Ian Moss told The Media Leader.
“Nobody is expecting this to happen overnight, but it is a process of ensuring greater verification and transparency in the flows of money.”
According to a 2023 report by market research company Juniper Research, the global cost of ad fraud reached $84bn in 2023 — equivalent to just over one-fifth (22%) of all online adspend. By 2028, the ad fraud market is expected to grow to $172bn.
While the UKSAFC conceded that there is no silver bullet to ad fraud, the group is pursuing the initiative because it believes the problem could be “significantly reduced” if advertisers and agencies simply took time to verify the credentials of the websites on which their ads appear.
The lack of transparency in the programmatic supply chain, alongside a lack of due diligence from brands and their agencies, were both reasons cited for why major brands were found by Adalytics recently to have advertised against sites hosting child sexual abuse material.
On this week’s episode of The Media Leader Podcast, Responsible Marketing Advisory head of digital Emily Roberts told said it is common practice for agencies to expand brands’ inclusion lists in order to achieve scale in online campaigns and that it is not unusual for digital campaigns to run on over 100,000 websites on the open web.
“Scale is not an excuse to avoid due diligence when we are talking about payments that may potentially be going to criminals or sites with criminal-level content on them,” said Moss.
He added that there is “no doubt” the longer the tail of websites a campaign advertises on, the greater the potential exposure to fraud and criminality.
“Brands and agencies advertise on 100,000-plus websites at their own risk,” he cautioned.
Ahead of the launch of the initiative, the UKSAFC will be undertaking consultations with the major industry trade bodies, platforms, agencies and brands “over the coming months” to solicit feedback and gauge support.
The goal of the group, which was founded in 2023 to highlight the scale of ad fraud and the threat it presents to brands, is to co-ordinate a multi-stakeholder approach to addressing the issue. That includes encouraging the government to commission research into the scale of ad-funded crime online.
“The fight against ad fraud is a journey, not a destination,” Moss commented. “If advertisers and their agencies have better control over where their money is going, we feel we could eliminate many of the bad actors at a stroke.”
Members and advisors of the group include Moss; The Digital Voice founder Julia Linehan; MailOnline director of technical operations, commercial, Tom Pickworth; Dentsu UK programmatic strategy director Arshiya Nazir; MAP founder and managing director Chris Morgan; We Are Liberty digital chief investment and media officer Raz Qazalbash; Tickle chief commercial officer Gareth Owen; consultant James Welch; and adtech investor Jon Walsh.
Also published in: Media Leader
