2025 TAG ANALYSIS SHOWS AD INDUSTRY PROGRESS IN FIGHTING FRAUD, SHARING THREATS, AND IMPROVING TRANSPARENCY

Highlights of TAG Impact & Compliance Report Include €3.45 Billion in Ad Fraud Savings for European Advertisers, Increase in High-Value Threat Intel, and Safer Ad Placements

Washington, DC -- February 3, 2026 -- The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), the leading global initiative dedicated to fighting criminal activity and increasing trust in digital advertising, today released its 2025 Impact and Compliance Report, a comprehensive data-driven assessment of the effectiveness and progress of TAG’s global initiatives over the past year.

The 2025 report builds on TAG’s inaugural Impact and Compliance Report last year, and it offers a program-by-program analysis of the impact from TAG certifications and tools across its core program areas of ad fraud, brand safety, malvertising, and transparency.

Highlights from the 2025 Impact and Compliance Report include:

• Global scale and adoption drive success: More than 434 member companies have joined TAG’s worldwide community, demonstrating TAG’s broad influence and reach across the global digital advertising supply chain.
• Rigorous industry standards result in billions in European ad fraud savings: Broad adoption of anti-fraud standards helped European advertisers save €3.45 billion from potential ad fraud losses, a 69% reduction compared to the amount that would have been lost without those programs in place.
• High-value threat intelligence critical for fast-changing threats: TAG’s Malvertising Threat Exchange (MTX) increased the sharing of high-value intelligence around adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures by 82% over the prior year, strengthening the industry’s ability to identify and disrupt sophisticated threats.
• Better transparency means better results: According to the ANA’s Programmatic Transparency Benchmark, industry progress helped marketers reclaim $13.6 billion in value, while Made-for-Advertising (MFA) spending fell below 0.5% for the first time.
• Data supports confidence in low-risk ad environments: Ongoing brand safety initiatives resulted in 99.1% of ad spend occurring in low-risk environments, enabling scale without compromising brand integrity.
• TAG expands and strengthens industry tools: TAG’s Data Center IP (DCIP) List grew to nearly 68 million IP addresses, while anti-piracy and malvertising tools were refined to improve accuracy, usability, and real-world enforcement.

“TAG’s programs have always been based on transparency and measurement, so member companies can utilize verifiable metrics to improve their standards and drive better results,” said Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG. “From billions in fraud savings for European advertisers to increased sharing of high-value threat intelligence and reduced waste through MFAs, TAG’s 2025 Impact and Compliance Report shows that accountability at scale works. At the same time, the report shows the work that remains to be done and the critical importance of building an even broader community of companies that adopt those high standards worldwide.”

In addition to quantifying the impact of TAG programs and tools, the report also summarized TAG’s investigations under TAG’s Due Process for Allegations of Non-compliance in 2025, which did not identify any violations of TAG guidelines. Taking a leadership role in fighting Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM), TAG organized and hosted a first-of-its-kind briefing by a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) representative to educate the advertising industry and share best practices for the reporting of such materials.

Read the full report

About TAG (Trustworthy Accountability Group)

TAG is the leading global initiative dedicated to fighting criminal activity and increasing trust in digital advertising. TAG works toward these goals by setting industry standards, sharing threat intelligence, and fostering cross-industry dialogue to spur collaboration and innovation.

TAG Certification Programs raise the bar on industry efforts to reduce fraudulent traffic, strengthen brand safety, increase transparency, and share information on new and emerging threats. TAG’s compliance tools support companies in meeting the industry’s rigorous standards, while its threat intelligence efforts deliver actionable insights to fortify the digital ad industry’s collective defenses.

By uniting the expertise and thought leadership of the hundreds of companies in the TAG Community, TAG helps the industry confront rapidly changing challenges and protect the integrity of the advertising ecosystem worldwide.