Industry leaders have welcomed the Audited Media Association of Australia's renewed focus on online brand safety, and agreed with the need for an industry-wide code of conduct to help prevent advertisers appearing on 'illegal' sites.
Speaking at the 'Accountability in Ad Spend' conference in Sydney yesterday, AMAA chief executive Paul Dovas said the directive had come down from the International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulations (IFABC) to "dramatically change" priorities.
"We've shifted a lot of work because the message is very clear from large advertisers that the focus they want the ABCs to turn to is brand safety and viewable impressions," he said. That will mean working with all sectors of the industry to develop a best-practice code of conduct.
A panel of industry leaders, including Music Rights Australia's Vanessa Hutley, UM's Mat Baxter, Brandscreen's Jo Gaines, the NSW Government's Alun Probert, HotHouse Interactive's Simon van Wyk and APRA|AMCOS's Andrew Harris, agreed with the need for a code of conduct.
"There is a real opportunity for the industries to find a way so the government doesn't have to get involved with this [through regulation]," Hutley said. "There are solutions out there, there are technologies available that will make this happen and it's happening now.
"What we're looking to do is see if we can create an environment where there is a code that makes it a proactive thing rather than finding yourself having to deal with what happened with the Mongols in future." Hutley was referring to the incident last week in which Victorian government advertising was found running on a motorcycle gang's website.
Andrew Harris, principal analyst at APMA|AMCOS, a music copyright body, said the creative industries needed to work together with the advertising industry to find a solution. "One of the problems with this debate is that sometimes the case is over-made as to the impact of digital piracy on artists, so all the arguments get dismissed," he said. "The truth is, piracy won't stop most artist from creating music, but it will hinder them from being able to achieve an unencumbered creative vision."
But Harris said contrary to popular belief, closing the "convenience gap", often blamed as the cause for film and TV piracy, didn't seem to work for the music industry. "In Australia we've got more [legitimate services] per capita than any other country in the world – they're out there, it's just people are choosing not to use them. We don't understand what's going on."
UM chief executive Mat Baxter agreed with the need for a code, but stressed that “as an industry generally I think we've been pretty responsible and proactive in trying to manage this issue”. Baxter highlighted that given the billions of ads served globally every day, the error rate was a very small number.
“The fact that an ad like Telstra falling on an illegal site still is newsworthy gives you a sense of the percentage of ads that are served correctly,” he said. “There are already an enormous number of checks and balances in the marketplace to try and prevent those situations from happening, but the reality of the internet is that whenever you think you're doing something smart, there's someone out there who's a little bit smarter who can circumvent that protection and work their way around it.”
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