In the days since the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump left one rally attendee dead and two seriously injured, companies like X are making money by advertising next to content promoting vitriolic conspiracy theories — advertisers have no idea their brands are associated with these messages, and websites reap the clicks and views — all completely legal.
The main group working on this issue is the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a trade group representing most of the world’s largest advertisers that formed in response to the brand safety crisis facing advertisers. Last week, political commentator Ben Shapiro blasted the effort during a House Judiciary Committee hearing targeting GARM. In written testimony before the committee, Shapiro argued that the group’s brand safety standards on “harassment,” “misinformation,” and “hate speech” are “subjective” and “highly partisan,” and called on Congress to investigate “censorship cartels like GARM.”
At this critical time, when political violence is on everyone’s mind, it is important for people of all stripes to remember that our primary information system, the internet, is not working. The business model of the media industry, which is largely advertising-based, is dysfunctional. That has brought chaos and uncertainty, but we can fix it.
For five years, I’ve been working to build new sustainable standards in digital advertising, helping to create a better internet for everyone. In 2021, my colleague Nandini Jami and I co-founded Check My Ads, the adtech industry’s first watchdog. Adtech refers to the tools and software that help advertisers place ads on the internet. Since then, our team has exposed major news stories about the advertising industry’s ties to hate groups. Our work forced Google to change its advertising policies, cutting off a revenue stream for fraudsters who spread misinformation.
Brands don’t want to be associated with ideas or activities that incite violence, distrust, or social harm. When a display ad appears on a website that causes harm (such as an ad for laundry detergent next to an ISIS training video), brands consider it a brand safety issue. However, brand safety standards vary from brand to brand. That’s why one group founded GARM, an industry-led organization that helps set standards for brand safety levels.
GARM is continually working to make its guidelines relevant for major advertisers. I know this because my organization has been actively lobbying them to set standards sooner. And they have resisted for years. “It’s a process,” they kept saying. “We have to make sure our members are taken into consideration. We have to be careful to make sure the language is appropriate for everyone.”
Prominent voices like Ben Shapiro try to make it seem like a website’s First Amendment rights are being violated and censored if the brand chooses to avoid sponsoring the website. That’s not how the First Amendment works, and that’s not how business works. Forcing brands to sponsor every website is a laughable anti-free speech move.
You can say whatever you want on your website, but don’t be surprised if the entire industry overwhelmingly agrees that they don’t want to be associated with content that denigrates transgender people, women, Black people, immigrants, or climate scientists. Being associated with bigotry looks bad for your brand.
GARM exists because the advertising system that powers the internet is broken. Advertisers have little control over their campaigns, and the tech platforms that power the majority of the digital ad space force brands to be where they don’t want to be. My organization has long criticized GARM for being slow, and for not being clear in its language at the start. But GARM exists because brands don’t have a say in where their ads appear online. Building a coalition of brand representatives was the only logical solution to give these companies some power in a market dominated by a few large tech platforms.
Under the current framework, digital ad buyers are frequently only provided with high-level campaign reporting. This data alone is not enough. Many companies, including GARM, have been working towards transparency for years. Check My Ads is actively drafting legislation in California, New York, Ottawa and Brussels to ensure that advertisers have fully legal access to individualized data about every ad and can receive refunds if their ad placements violate brand safety guidelines.
For decades now, advertisers have lost control, news publishers have lost revenue, and we’ve been bombarded with ads we don’t want to see. Adtech is a business that faces a recurring problem: these companies thrive without anyone seeing what they’re doing. We need to change that.
Ben Shapiro has a right, protected by the First Amendment, to say what he wants online, and advertisers have the right to distance themselves from that right with their ads.
