Advertising bodies commit to measures designed to stop placement of ads next to illegal content

The Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA), the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) UK, the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) have backed a number of new 'good practice principles' in an effort to combat ad misplacement.

The bodies, acting under the Digital Trading Standards Group (DTSG) banner, said the principles are designed to "significantly reduce the risk of the misplacement of display advertising on digital media properties, uphold brand safety and protect the integrity of digital advertising". The bodies are united behind a "common goal" of ensuring digital display ads do not "support inappropriate or illegal content or services", the DTSG said.

Advertising clearance expert George Campbell of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that businesses would welcome greater control over where their brands appear online.

"Brand owners will welcome this initiative as helping to ensure that adverts for their products and services are not inadvertently placed alongside inappropriate content," Campbell said.

The new principles, which supersede previous industry initiatives on the issue, require transactions between buyers and sellers of online ads to be governed by a specific agreement or wider contract. Those documents would require to specify where advertising should or should not appear. The contracting parties could make use of a independently-certified tools for assessing content or draw up a list of content themselves that it is either appropriate or inappropriate to place ads next to.

Website operators and other sellers of advertising space will have to go to "reasonable endeavours" to "minimise the risk of ad misplacement" and will be required to "respondent appropriately" via a procedure for removing ads where they have been found to have been misplaced, according to the new principles.

The ad misplacement minimisation policies of each signatory to the principles would be subject to independent verification within set timescales under the voluntary regime.  Compliance with the principles would be verified by an auditor and those 'verification providers' would issue certificates of compliance to those businesses that adhere to the framework.

Nick Stringer, director of regulatory affairs at the IAB UK, said that the new framework "will give marketers greater confidence to continue to invest in digital". He called on "all relevant ad trading businesses to participate".

ISBA’s marketing services manager, David Ellison, added: "Brands rightly need greater reassurances against the significant risk to their reputation of online ad misplacement. The complex digital landscape we operate in demanded a joined-up approach from industry, which is precisely what these principles represent."

Advertisers have fallen under pressure in recent times from rights holders that are keen for the industry to do more to help them combat online copyright infringement by cutting the revenues websites hosting illegal content generate through ads.

Nick Stringer of the IAB UK told Out-Law.com in June that the industry was working towards the new framework that has just been announced.

The City of London Police (CoLP) announced earlier this month that it had conducted a successful pilot operation, in conjunction with rights holders, in which it had managed to cut the number of adverts appearing on copyright infringing websites by major brands.