“We continue to prioritize our work with industry organizations to develop and champion standards that address challenges, such as ad fraud and brand safety,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. The company remains a TAG member.
Google felt TAG’s ad fraud and brand safety certifications were “redundant with their current MRC accreditation,” Zaneis acknowledged, “and they are absolutely correct.” Audits conducted by EY on behalf of the MRC have determined that many MRC and TAG requirements overlap, he added.
The Trade Desk, the world’s largest independent demand-side platform, also chose not to reapply for TAG certification in 2026, Zaneis confirmed. The adtech company previously held all four TAG certifications. Like Google, it remains a TAG member, but determined that its internal standards already exceeded some TAG requirements. The Trade Desk declined to comment.
ADWEEK found that Dailymotion’s certifications also disappeared from TAG’s registry of organizations that participate in its ecosystem. Zaneis said the company also chose not to renew its certification this year, although the video-sharing platform still displays TAG seals and claims to be TAG-certified for brand safety and anti-fraud on its website. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Zaneis suggested the turnover is fairly standard, claiming that other trade organizations see between 5% to 10% attrition annually. “This industry is in continual churn,” he said.
But some in the industry are questioning the value of TAG certifications.
Reassessing TAG’s value
One leader at a prominent buy-side platform, speaking anonymously, said his company ended its TAG certifications years ago “because we didn’t see the value in them.”
The person believes that TAG’s original value proposition—to create a registry of vendors where industry players could verify who they were working with—became obsolete when the IAB Tech Lab, a different trade body, debuted sellers.json, ads.txt, and the supply chain object, which did essentially the same thing for free.
Zaneis pushed back against the suggestion that TAG’s mission has changed, saying the TAG registry is still “core to what we do.” TAG assigns each of the approximately 500 companies in its registry a unique ID, which is then passed into ads.txt and other protocols used in real-time bidding auctions, he added.
The buy-side company decided to withdraw from TAG membership entirely for 2026, the anonymous source said. It had, at one point, been TAG-certified against fraud.
This person said these seals became more about optics rather than veritable assurances, and suggested TAG’s audits, most often handled by either the Alliance for Audited Media, were not rigorous. “They would literally give [certifications] to anyone,” the person said, adding, “It became almost a running joke that the more someone talked about TAG certifications, the more shady they were, and the less likely we would be to do business with them.”
