Proud to receive the IAB Gold Standard

When Skyrise was formed, following our merger, obtaining IAB Gold Standard was a strategic priority. Not because we wanted to follow a trend. But because in the ever-evolving world we work in, trust and transparency are paramount. 

Gareth Owen, Delivery Director, Skyrise, unpacks the rigorous accreditation process of IAB Gold Standard 2.1. And reveals how for Skyrise it’s been anything but a box-ticking exercise. 

Like many people, before I began this process, the thought of accreditation in general, (whatever the governing body or certification), filled me with a bit of dread.

I presumed it would be a laborious process of form-filling and box-ticking.

The truth is it was anything but that. It’s been fairly career defining.

I’m immensely proud of the journey we went on. 

It is a rigorous process. Not only does it involve compliance and alignment with the IAB framework, you need to be a Trustworthy Advisory Group (TAG) member in good standing and have a valid TAG Brand Safety certification. This is a third party independent verification via TAG who were magnificently meticulous throughout. It would be easy to cynically think that it's pay your money and get a certificate. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Learning and improving are the obvious outputs. There are also more cathartic and intangible ones. When forming Skyrise a year ago, we wanted trust and transparency to guide us. To commit to ethical practices and foster a better advertising ecosystem for everyone. One of our core values ‘Real’ came to fruition as a result. ‘Real’ became reality, through achieving the Gold Standard.

I look after campaign deliverables in my daily work, so I shape much of the practices that accreditation touches on. It could be argued I was the obvious internal choice to look after this. But it was far from a solo project.

It reached right across the business. Every department was involved, and it touched most people professionally in some way. Honourable mentions of being ever helpful and supportive should go to Prim Patel our Finance Director, Nicole Nixon our Marketing Manager and every single one of our Trading team. 

Special praise and eternal gratitude are reserved for the golden duo of Dave Lowe and Billy Kelly. The three of us formed the core project team. It simply wouldn’t have been possible without them.

It was something we embraced as a collective. A way of being better. We questioned everything. We made decisions. We made friends with suppliers. We unfriended some who weren’t right for us. Improving quality became a mantra. Improving effectiveness, our reason.

That’s not to say it was plain sailing.

Accreditations, particularly for high growth business, can be a difficult proposition. There is a steep learning curve and an outlay in resources. Audits disrupt, and the pressures involved in meeting specifications pushed staff hard.

Yet for Skyrise accreditation was imperative. Customers (rightly) often assume these standards were in place. While they were, we improved and learnt that while we were very good, we weren’t doing everything. 

In the constant flux world of digital advertising you have to keep evolving.

The example I cite for this is serving ads around DE&I topics. There are inevitably some problematic challenges around brand safety here. Some of the keywords overlap into adult content and hate speech. The easy thing to do is walk away. That is pretty much what the walled giants and tech giants do. Build huge barriers, and effectively say, you don’t want to do that. We’ll spend your money another way. A way that is less effective for you.

There is another way.

It involves a bit of lateral thinking and navigation. It produces a better advertising experience, for users and brands. That has to be a good thing. And it’s not like DE&I isn’t an imperative. It's a crucially important context for lots of brands.   

IAB Gold Standard accreditation shows that as a business, Skyrise is committed to ethical practices. We want to foster a healthier advertising ecosystem for all stakeholders. We are incredibly proud to join this community.

Elevating Trust and Transparency

The IAB Gold Standard 2.1 goes beyond simply offering a mark of approval a client wants. It sets a clear benchmark for best practices in several crucial areas:

• Combating Ad Fraud: We’ve actively tackled the issue of ad fraud, which costs advertisers billions every year. By adhering to industry-approved methods for identifying and mitigating fraudulent activity, we ensure that ad spend is directed towards legitimate publishers and audiences.
• Upholding Brand Safety: Brand and agencies rely on Skyrise to protect their reputation by displaying their ads in appropriate environments. Gold Standard certification signifies our commitment to brand safety.  Through measures like content filtering and real-time monitoring, we minimise the risk of brand association with undesirable content.
• Boosting User Experience: Intrusive and irrelevant ads are the scourge of digital advertising. The Gold Standard emphasises responsible advertising practices that respect user privacy and deliver a positive ad experience. 
• Enhancing Supply Chain Transparency: The complex nature of the programmatic advertising supply chain can often lead to a lack of clarity about where ad spend is going. The Gold Standard mandates adherence to initiatives like Buyers.json and the SupplyChain Object, which gives transparency into the flow of data and financials within the ecosystem.

Skyrise has always put privacy and ethics at its heart. After all, we were built to be privacy first without using cookies or identifiers.

At the time that was way ahead of the game. Now it is the game.

This is an unambiguous and rigorous certification. Working with It has made us look at all aspects of our business, now and going forward.

It has shown us how much more there is to do. It’s not something you ‘get’ and then put to one side. It’s something that underpins everything we do. It sits proudly alongside our Great Places to Work certification.

I am proud of what Skyrise has achieved and grateful to the team. In short, IAB Gold Standard represents everything we value at Skyrise. The certified businesses are accelerating a shift to redefine digital advertising success and build a more inclusive and sustainable way of advertising.

It is not just a certificate, it recognises the culture and ethos of who we are. It has taken ten months to go through the rigorous verification process, covering quality, third party suppliers, how we support our advertisers and our clients. 

Gold Standard is a continual programme of improvement. To maintain the certification we must continue to get better and we are absolutely committed to that.