Dear community, I’m Sarah Kay Wiley, the Director of Policy at Check My Ads, and I’m with Arielle...
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Dear community,
I’m Sarah Kay Wiley, the Director of Policy at Check My Ads, and I’m here with Arielle Garcia, our Chief Operating Officer. With the support of our advocacy, Congress has launched a bipartisan inquiry into the monetization of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) by adtech vendors, including Google and Amazon.
A recent report by Adalytics identified Industry-certified adtech companies placing ads next to this horrific and illegal content, profiting alongside the anonymous owner of this website. The advertisers identified as having had their ads placed on the CSAM-hosting website are household names, including Adidas, Pepsi, L’Oreal, Mastercard, the Department of Homeland Security, Samsung, Save the Children, and more.
Given the opacity of the digital advertising market, brands have no idea where their ads are being placed on the internet, leaving them powerless to stop their ad dollars from funding heinous crimes. The business model of the internet is advertising, and that business model is broken.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Outbrain, and other adtech companies' monetization of CSAM contradicts their stated polices. It is a violation of United States law. And it is heartbreaking for the victims directly affected by these crimes. By enabling the dissemination and monetization of CSAM, these companies are financially exploiting the abuse of the most vulnerable among us.
Several of the advertisers who had ads served on this website used third party brand safety and verification tools offered by Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify to keep their ads off of harmful content. Yet again, this tech has shown itself to be ineffective.
After receiving the Senators' letters, multiple large vendors like Amazon and Microsoft have blocked the domain and several vendors committed to over-hauling their processes. This is an encouraging start; and we'll be making sure they follow through on these promises.
We’re calling upon all advertisers, publishers, and citizens concerned with protecting victims of child sexual abuse to join us in pushing both the industry and policymakers to address these shortcomings and ensure such failures do not recur.
And we’re grateful to you, our community, for supporting our mission to create a transparent and fair digital advertising market. We couldn’t do this work without you.
Brands have been left powerless to prevent their ad dollars from bankrolling some of the most criminal content on the internet, while advertising technology companies like Amazon and Google profited off of placing ads on these terrible websites. With bipartisan support from Senator Blackburn and Senator Blumenthal, we sent letters to the CEOs of four advertising technology firms, two industry standards bodies, and filed a complaint with the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) demanding answers and accountability.
It helps to hear from the community when something goes “right” just as much as something going “wrong." We encourage any of our community members based in Connecticut or Tennessee to call and thank Senator Blackburn (TN) and Senator Blumenthal (CT) for their leadership on this issue, and keeping adtech in check.
🚨 Author and advertising legend Bob Hoffman featured us in his influential marketing and advertising blog, Ad Contrarian. In Online Advertising Hits Rock Bottom, he calls upon the industry to address this terrible issue.
👏 Brand and business innovator Cindy Gallop also spoke out this week, citing our advocacy and extorting the industry to do better.
Check My Ads in the Wild 🐾
We’re so grateful to see policymakers, industry heads, and the public calling for change in the wake of our advocacy. Here’s where our work has been noticed:
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