Why Ad Integrity is important

For better or for worse, advertising powers the Internet.

In fact, it powers the information economy more broadly. Until we find practical ways to reliably implement micro-payments for content, advertising is here to stay.*

Ensuring that advertising is working effectively then is to ensure that digital capitalism is working.

A digital ad is a guarantee that a message will be seen. It is a little space on the internet where individuals or organisations can deliver a message to thousands or millions of people.

In fact, ads are one of the only ways you can guarantee that your message will be seen and heard.

Bad actors know this. And bad actors like to spread malicious messages. Those messages can be propaganda and disinformation or more typically those messages can be scams or fraud.

Because ads guarantee Reach** and if you agree that Freedom of Speech should not mean Freedom of Reach, then ads most certainly must be moderated strictly.

Defending ads as cultural attack vectors and degraders of trust in commerce is a problem worth solving. Without it, commerce could not take place online.

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Notes

• *Even the on-going shift toward ecommerce on social platforms will include most of the elements that power today's digital advertising.

• ** This is not entirely true for all ad products but in all cases is more true than for organic content.

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This post is part of the Trust, Safety & Integrity Sequence a series of short thoughts inspired by my time working on Monetisation Integrity with TikTok. The posts focus mostly on the experience of trust and safety and ad integrity online, with particular emphasis on the larger digital platforms.