Advertising accountability starts with a basic question: what does your money support after you buy an ad?
Brands pay to reach people on social platforms. Those platforms can also distribute antisemitism, hate speech, misinformation and dangerous content. Advertising funds the platforms, and some of that spending can reach the people producing harmful content through monetization programs.
Advertisers often cannot trace the full path of their spending. That leaves a gap between a brand’s stated values and what its money may support.
How I got into this conversation
Tim Love invited me to Darien and introduced me to Eric Feinberg.
Tim is a former vice-chairman of Omnicom, one of the largest advertising and marketing groups. He spent decades helping major brands build their businesses. He understands the influence advertisers have—and the responsibility that comes with it.
Eric is an online-safety researcher and founder of GIPEC, the Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center. His work has documented extremist and harmful content on major platforms for years. A 2018 Digital Citizens Alliance investigation credits his research and technology.
When we spoke, Eric wanted the human consequences to stay in the conversation.
“Kids are dying, brands are buying.”— Eric Feinberg
I care because I am a marketer and a father. I have worked inside large companies. I know how much attention goes into what a brand says. The same scrutiny should apply to what its spending supports.
Then Inside Track reached out
Separately, Inside Track, a UK nonprofit that brings together anonymous industry insiders, contacted me. On October 13, I spoke with Iram Cook-Monie and Grace Murray about their work with senior advertising executives.
We discussed their upcoming memo and my work through the Marketing Accountability Council and Clean Data Alliance. Then Eric told me Inside Track had been speaking with him, too. He shared their memo with me; Iram later sent it directly.
The connections were becoming clear. Tim had introduced me to someone documenting the harm. Inside Track was gathering testimony from people inside the business that funds it. MAC could help turn those concerns into questions advertisers must answer.
What the memo says—and what MAC can do
Inside Track’s An Abdication of Responsibility: Why Advertising Firms Continue to Monetise Hate argues that UK advertising firms could do more to stop funding hate. Its anonymous authors describe opaque spending, commercial incentives and reluctance to challenge platform relationships.
Their direct experience is British. American advertisers need to examine their own spending, too.
Eric’s proposal is specific: “We want a third-party auditing board.”
Through MAC, I want to help define what independent audits should check: where ads appeared, what harmful content was found, how the platform responded and what evidence shows the problem was addressed.
That fits MAC’s purpose: compare what companies promise with what they actually do. The board is still a proposal. Our conversations with Inside Track are an exchange of evidence and ideas; no formal partnership has been announced.