Officials from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) have held multiple conversations with advertising executives about several brand-safety scandals spurred by reports from the ad-tech consulting firm Adalytics, Marketing Brew has learned.
In the conversations, officials have inquired about reports alleging that YouTube inadvertently collected data on children, that Google sold and placed ads that rarely met its own standards, and that Google placed ads on sanctioned Russian and Iranian websites for advertisers including the US Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard, and the FBI, according to two people who spoke to Marketing Brew on the condition of anonymity out of concern for potential professional and personal repercussions.
According to three people, the officials have also asked about how advertisers work with the ad verification companies Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify, which sell services that claim to prevent ads from running against objectionable content, detect fraud, and measure digital ads.
In the conversations, officials asked about the effectiveness of these tools and whether there could be a conflict of interest between the verification vendors, their programmatic partners, and the advertisers they represent.
Federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, spent more than $1.8 billion on advertising in 2023, according to procurement records analyzed by Rebuild Local News.
It’s unclear what the exact focus of any inquiry is or its scope. In a statement, NCIS spokesperson Jeff Houston said that “out of respect for the investigative process, NCIS does not comment on, confirm details relating to, or confirm the existence of ongoing investigations.”
Jonathan Lee, general counsel at Adalytics, said that “as a matter of course, Adalytics can neither confirm nor deny our participation in or the existence of any regulatory, national security, or law enforcement investigations.”
Michael Aciman, a spokesman for Google, said in a statement that “the Adalytics reports about Google were deeply flawed, filled with exaggerations and made a range of false conclusions.” Jaime Levitt Corry, a spokesperson for Integral Ad Science, declined to comment but directed Marketing Brew toward a previously issued statement disputing a report from Adalytics.
A public affairs officer for the DOJ did not return Marketing Brew’s request for comment. A spokesperson for DoubleVerify did not return a request for comment.
Hot seat
The interviews come as regulators continue to scrutinize ad-tech companies for their practices. Last month, the DOJ argued in court that Google monopolized advertising technology in a case that could be decided before the new year. In August, the tech giant lost its other federal antitrust trial, in which a judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search; government officials are weighing a number of remedies, including potentially breaking up some of Google’s businesses.
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Both Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify have also been cast into the spotlight through several unflattering Adalytics reports over the years, which have alleged that the companies provided inaccurate metrics to publishers. Adalytics’s most recent report, from August, found that many advertisers, including the US Navy, ran ads alongside sexually explicit and racist content, even though many of the ads’ code indicated the use of brand-safety-vendor technology.
In company blog posts, Integral Ad Science said Adalytics used a “flawed methodology” in its August report, while DoubleVerify said that “reports like this are misleading as they lack critical details about the featured advertisers’ campaign strategy and setup.” Google has also pushed back on Adalytics’s findings in company blog posts and statements.
Adalytics started as a relatively obscure firm led by Franaszek, but it has built a reputation for being a thorn in the side of the ad-tech industry since it began publishing reports about ad tech several years ago. Today, Adalytics’s findings are regularly reported on by major publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and Franaszek has appeared at industry conferences to discuss his work.
In the wake of reports from Analytics, some advertisers and publishers have soured on brand-safety tools.
“Advertisers hired ad verification companies thinking that they would act continuously to update their capabilities,” Lou Paskalis, a marketing consultant and former president and COO of the industry trade group MMA Global, told Marketing Brew. “Neither the agencies or the ad verification companies are evolving their capabilities as fast as they should.”
In recent years, ad verification and brand-safety companies have also come under fire amid right-wing efforts, led by X owner Elon Musk, to delegitimize the brand-safety industry, which Musk has described as an “advertising boycott racket.”
In August, X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted an open letter to advertisers informing them that the platform had sued a collection of advertisers, as well as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), accusing them of “illegal behavior.”
GARM disbanded several days later.