| Founded | October 2021; 3 years ago (2021-10) |
|---|---|
| Founder | Claire Atkin and Nandini Jammi |
| Type | 501(c)(3) |
| Focus | Advertising technology industry |
| Website | checkmyads |
TheCheck My Ads Institute is an organization founded byNandini Jammi and Claire Atkin. The Check My Ads Institute is a non-profit advertisingwatchdog organization created in October 2021, which aims to bring transparency and accountability to theadvertising technology industry.[1] Jammi and Atkin previously published a newsletter calledBranded.[1] TheCheck My Ads Agency was abrand safety andmarketing consultancy that Atkin and Jammi founded in 2020.[2] As of February 2023, the Check My Ads Agency is no longer active.
Atkin and Jammi originally focused primarily on the issue of advertisements displaying on websites they describe as "bad faith publishers": websites containingfake news,medical misinformation, andconspiracy theories, or websites engaged inadvertising fraud.[2] Many companies are not aware specifically where their advertisements display due to the complexity and lack of transparency inonline advertising; the Check My Ads Institute researches the online advertising industry, and pushes for increased transparency and choice. The Check My Ads Agency aimed to help companies learn more about where their products or services are advertised and avoid advertising on harmful websites.[2][3][4]
Prior to Check My Ads, Nandini Jammi had co-founded and run the social media watchdog organizationSleeping Giants, which focused on pressuring companies to remove their advertising from far-right websites.[3] Claire Atkin was a marketer who had become concerned about the role of online advertising in enabling disinformation, and its ultimate influence in elections.[5] In January 2020 they published their first issue ofBranded, a newsletter where they describe their research into advertising technology (adtech) and problems they identify. In June 2020, Jammi and Atkin co-founded the Check My Ads consulting agency.[2] In October 2021, they co-founded the Check My Ads Institute, a non-profit group to focus on investigative research.[1]
In October 2021, Atkin and Jammi created the Check My Ads Institute, a non-profit watchdog organization focused on advertising technology, its role in promoting harmful websites and fraud within the industry. The Institute has expanded its focus beyond the investigative reporting Atkin and Jammi have done into advertising's enablement of bad faith publishers. The Institute currently has three primary program areas: Policy, Research and Industry Engagement, and Communications.[1]
Jammi and Atkin previously wrote a newsletter calledBranded, where they published their research into how adtech funds what they call "bad faith publishers": sites that publishfake news, misinformation, or conspiracy theories, or sites engaged in ad fraud.[2] They published their first issue in January 2020.[5] As of October 2021[update],Branded had approximately 8,000 subscribers.[1]
| Industry | Brand safety |
|---|---|
| Founded | June 2020; 4 years ago (2020-06) |
| Founder | Claire Atkin andNandini Jammi |
| Defunct | 2023 (2023) |
| Website | checkmyads |
The Check My Ads Agency was a for-profitbrand safety and marketing consultancy. With the emergence ofprogrammatic advertising, online advertisements are oftenbought per-impression in real time: ad space on a page is bought and filled as a user loads a webpage. Because of the automated and highly complex nature of these systems, companies often don't have much information about the websites on which their advertisements may eventually be displayed.[3] Companies hired Check My Ads to help them identify and vet where their advertisements are being displayed, and also to limit spending on fraudulent advertising schemes or ineffective campaigns. The agency has helped customers avoid inadvertently having their ads display on websites containing content they find objectionable, such as websites that publishmedical misinformation orconspiracy theories.[3] Check My Ads also ran brand safety workshops, and created guidelines for marketers.[1]
Among their first stories inBranded was the topic of brand safety organizationsblocklisting the word "coronavirus" during theCOVID-19 pandemic, without any attempt to determine if a website was a legitimate publisher. Atkin and Jammi said this was having a detrimental effect on the news industry, and that ads were being blocked from publications includingThe Boston Globe,CBS News, andVox as a result of the broad filters.[3][2] They have reported more broadly on keyword blocklists, which they have argued is reducing funding to reporting on important topics; for example, Atkin wrote inBranded in June 2020 thatFidelity Investments had blocklisted the words "immigration" and "racism". According to aVice Media executive, articles they had published that pertained toGeorge Floyd, protests, andBlack Lives Matter earned 57% lower advertising rates despite being some of the most highly-visited.[6]
Beginning in August 2020, Atkin and Jammi have reported on "dark pool sales houses": where a group of unrelated publishers share an ID on anad exchange, leading to the group being misrepresented as a single entity. This has allowed publishers to circumvent blocks from ad exchanges, as well as illegitimately draw bettercost per mille (CPM).[1][7][8]
In April 2021, the group reported that some large American adtech companies, includingGoogle andCriteo, had been placing advertisements on Russian-backed disinformation websites even after the websites had been sanctioned by theUnited States Department of the Treasury'sOffice of Foreign Assets Control. American companies doing business with sanction groups can result in severe criminal penalties. The adtech companies all stopped working with the Russian sites following the Check My Ads report.[9]