The American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced that Linda Woolley has been named president and CEO of TAG, the joint marketing-media industry program to eradicate digital advertising fraud, malware, ad-supported piracy, and other deficiencies in the digital communications supply chain.
Formerly known as the Trustworthy Digital Supply Chain Initiative, TAG is a first-of-its-kind cross-industry accountability program to create transparency in the business relationships and transactions that undergird the digital ad industry, while continuing to enable the astonishing levels of innovation that have propelled digital advertising into the largest ad medium in the United States. The IAB, ANA, and 4A’s announced their joint plans to create the new collective organization at the IAB MIXX Conference in September 2014. The group will operationalize principles around these critical issues, monitor the ecosystem for compliance, and develop incentives for broad industry participation and consequences for untrustworthy actors.
Woolley was a member of the Advertising Self-Regulatory Council’s board of directors from 2012 to 2014. Her extensive leadership experience includes nearly six years in executive roles at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), where she most recently served as CEO and president, and before that as head of the association’s public policy office in Washington. Prior to that, Woolley spent more than 30 years in public affairs, government relations and policy via her own firm, LegisLaw Consulting, as well as ITT Industries, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Health & the Environment.
TAG is being created with the intent to spur an industry-wide change in behavior at an unprecedented scale, focusing on four core areas: eliminating fraudulent traffic, combating malware, fighting ad-supported Internet piracy, and promoting brand safety through greater transparency.
“Establishing a trustworthy digital supply chain–and rooting out fraud–is one of the most important things we can be doing right now,” said Woolley. “The CEOs of IAB, ANA, and the 4A’s have shown remarkable leadership and foresight to create TAG. I am honored to be working with them on this groundbreaking project.”
