“The time has come for the debating to stop, and the action to start. By Cannes, it needs to be a different conversation we are all having.”

In the lead-up to his contribution to The Guardian’s Changing Media Summit on March 15, The&Partnership founder, Jonny Hornby, gathered together the facts.

They are alarming.

The&Partnership: Take off your rose coloured glasses about ad fraud

Talking about the problem, he knows, is only part of the solution. He has now called on the industry to move from debating to action and set an ultimatum for the conversation to change by the week of Cannes Lions in June.

“I’ve sat on countless panels for several years now discussing the growing problems of ad fraud and brand safety,” Hornby stated. “And yet still far too little is being done to make a dent in the billions our clients are losing to fraudsters – let alone the reputational damage caused by the inadequate brand safety policies of major platforms like Google, YouTube and Facebook.”

“While we welcome some of the measures that have been taken – particularly in terms of starting to address problems like 50% viewability benchmarks – definitive action, concrete promises and significant investment of resource will be needed by the Googles, YouTubes, Facebooks and other big-platform players to move the ad fraud and brand safety conversations on to a different and genuinely better place.

“The time has come for the debating to stop, and the action to start. By Cannes, it needs to be a different conversation we are all having.”

“It should be within our gift as the clients who invest the money, and as the media agencies who recommend where to spend it, to simply agree to withdraw media spend from environments where we cannot guarantee safety for our clients’ brands.

“I’d therefore like to set us a deadline – of the week of Cannes Lions in June would be a good date – to agree that by then we should have moved the conversation on – for the debating to stop, and the action to have started.

“If it hasn’t, our call will have to be to the industry – to refuse to invest in inventory that doesn’t come with a warranty against it – with new, much lower benchmarks of acceptability, and a complete guarantee of safety – for our clients, for the reputations of their brands, and for our own reputation as an industry.”

Read the report compiled by The&Partnership and m/SIX on what the industry needs to take to combat ad fraud: Ad Fraud_Report_The&Partnership_mSIX_Adloox