• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, November 28, 2017

Facebook, Amazon Services, Carat, Hulu and MediaIQ are among 26 companies that have received anti-fraud seals from the ad industry's Trustworthy Accountability Group since April.

TAG's anti-fraud initiative aims to ensure that online material and ads are seen by people, as opposed to bots. Buyers (including advertisers and agencies), sellers (including publishers) and intermediaries (including ad networks) are eligible to receive a "Certified Against Fraud" seal indicating that they comply with TAG's certification guidelines.

Those guidelines require buyers to have a designated TAG compliance officer and comply with the Media Rating Council's Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Guidelines. Publishers and other sellers must comply with the same guidelines as buyers, and also take additional steps, including filtering domains and IP addresses that are considered to pose a high risk of invalid traffic.

Ad networks and other intermediaries must follow the guidelines for buyers and sellers, and also implement TAG's payment-identification system, which aims to keep track of the money that flows between the parties.  

TAG has now awarded the "Certified Against Fraud" seal to 50 companies; an additional 120 are in the process of becoming certified.

In addition to addressing ad fraud, TAG aims to combat malware, fight ad-supported piracy and promote brand safety.