TAG Reissues “Brand Safety” Certificate to X, Draws Ire of Industry Watchdogs
X has again received the “brand safety” certification from the ad industry’s Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), assuring advertisers that their ads don’t appear adjacent to inappropriate content. However, a few watchdogs have also criticized the recertification. Learn more about it here.
- Social media platform X has again received the “brand safety” certification from the ad industry’s Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), assuring advertisers that their ads don’t appear adjacent to inappropriate content.
- On the other hand, a few watchdogs have also criticized the recertification. Learn more about it here.
Advertisers’ ads showing up adjacent to inappropriate content has been a problem for a long time. That said, advertisers may feel assured when advertising on X, as the social media platform has received the “brand safety” certification from the ad industry’s Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). X tweeted about its recertification, saying it “deployed every single brand control the marketplace has requested over the past 12 months.”
The company further said, “In just one year, our team of engineers built all-new Brand Adjacency Controls and Sensitivity Settings, and established third-party measurement partnerships.”
The recertification seems to support earlier claims by metrics company DoubleVerify that the social media company’s brand-safety rating between October 2023 and March 2024 was 99.9%, not the previously reported lower scores.
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However, the recertification of X by TAG has attracted criticism from the watchdog Check My Ads, which also questioned the platform’s certification last year. The watchdog stated that anyone logging into the platform could readily see that it was overrun with hate. Last September, the watchdog also alleged that X went against the ad organization’s certification requirements in many ways. These included not having a designated brand safety officer, thus failing to conduct internal audits. Further, Check My Ads had filed a complaint with TAG that the social media platform allowed ads adjacent to objectionable content. By March, TAG had briefly removed X from the roster of companies certified for brand safety.
Separately, Media Matters, another watchdog, had reported last year that X was placing ads for a few brands, such as IBM, Apple, Oracle, and Bravo, adjacent to pro-Nazi posts. Following the report, these and a few other companies suspended advertising on the platform.
However, TAG hasn’t responded to any of these allegations.
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