Google must open up 'walled garden': The&Partnership
Advertising agency The&Partnership has called on the likes of Google and Facebook to open up their walled gardens to independent ad verification software. The firm believes that funds lost to ad fraud could be significantly reduced if the tech companies would let third-party ad verification solutions in. If the tech firms refuse entry to verification providers, they are "denying our clients the clean, brand-safe environments they quite rightly demand", said The&Partnership founder Johnny Hornby.  

by Richard Whitman , Columnist, March 27, 2017

As a follow up to its study which found up to $16.4 billion could be lost to ad fraud in 2017,

The&Partnership is, well, basically demanding that Google, Facebook, et al open up their walled gardens and allow inside third party purveyors of ad verification solutions such as Adloox, a company The&Partnership partnered with for the study.



The&Partnership argues ad spend lost to ad fraud could be reduced to single digits if only the giants would allow in solutions such as Adlooz. Currently the big boys don't allow in third party solutions of this type.



Arguing for a doorway into the walled garden, The&Partnership Founder Johnny Hornby said, "Without this, not only are these platforms denying our clients the clean, brand-safe environments they quite rightly demand - but

advertisers also lack full transparency and visibility in terms of the money they are losing to fraudulent advertising and advertising that never gets seen. If Google wants to see advertisers returning to YouTube in significant numbers. it is going to have to move quickly."



Hornby suggests Google needs to do two things, "Firstly, Google needs to stop marking its own homework, fully opening up its walled gardens to independent, specialist ad verification software, to give brands

the visibility and transparency they deserve. Secondly, Google will need to start looking at brand safety from completely the other end of the telescope. Instead of allowing huge volumes of content to become ad-enabled every minute, and then endeavoring to convince advertisers that the dangerous and offensive content among it will be found and weeded out, it should be presenting advertisers only with advertising opportunities that have already been pre-vetted and found to be 100% safe."



Does anyone think Google is actually going to allow this? Of course, they could just buy Adloox and then there might be some actual headway.