The company formerly known as Twitter has lost its most coveted seals of approval in the ad industry, likely making it much harder to lure back advertisers who fled.
Late last summer, we learned that Trustworthy Accountability Group had quietly renewed X’s Brand Safety Certified seal — and immediately filed a formal complaint. Anyone who’s been on the platform since Elon Musk took it over knows the cesspool it’s turned into. Musk’s own antisemitic comments drove away advertisers like Disney, Lionsgate, and Apple.
TAG was formed as an industry body to create trust and transparency in the ad marketplace. In reality, it’s a pay-to-play rubber stamp, funding itself largely through hefty certification fees. It doesn’t do any audits on member organizations itself, instead relying on them to audit themselves or hire a third party. The only thing it’s independently auditing is if a check clears.
Conveniently, TAG also does not update advertisers or the public about the outcomes of their investigations. And since TAG CEO Mike Zaneis doesn’t respond to our emails, we keep an eye on changes through its online registry.
This week, TAG’s entry for X went from looking like this:
To looking like this:
We emailed Todd Miller, TAG’s VP of policy and compliance, and he confirmed it: “X Corp does not hold TAG’s Brand Safety Certified Seal at this time.”
This is a big blow for X’s ads business — they’re probably not getting back all those advertisers who left over brand safety worries.
As for TAG? They are on notice. If Twitter can maintain a brand safety certification over 9 months, what’s the point of TAG?