We are excited to announce that Ad Lightning is officially part of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) Certified Against Malware Program. As the company states, their goal is to eliminate the distribution of malware throughout the digital advertising supply chain by establishing a method to coordinate the industry in its defense against malware peddlers.

To obtain a TAG “Certified Against Malware” seal, companies must comply with a rigorous set of guidelines related to their specific roles in the digital advertising supply chain, including the adoption of TAG’s Best Practices for Scanning Creative for Malware.

Our VP of Product, Paul Major, sat down to answer some questions about why we think being TAG certified is so important to us and our clients.

Why is TAG certification important for Ad Lightning?

TAG is recognized as the organization that is leading the charge to bring transparency and accountability to the digital ad industry. Gaining the TAG seal for Certified Against Malware requires a comprehensive review of the applicant’s approach for addressing malware in its various forms. By achieving our TAG certification as a “vendor” providing anti-malware services, we are now certified to be able to help our customers also achieve their own TAG compliance.

What does this mean for our new and existing partners?

The great news for our partners is now that our blocking solution has been certified, all of our clients that have it deployed will be in TAG compliance wherever it is applied. We have heard from many customers over the past year that were looking into getting their own TAG certification against malware, so we are really excited that we can now enable our customers that want to be in compliance.

What is the biggest problem you see TAG tackling this year?

A big focus for TAG is bringing more transparency into digital advertising with the goal of better facilitating malware event resolution and handling. This is an area where we feel like we are in a great position to help since we can identify who is in the chain when we block a specific ad. We have our own initiatives around surfacing this data for our publisher partners and streamlining delivery back to their network partners, so we are excited to be able to help further efforts around providing better transparency.

We believe in transparency and creating a digital advertising supply chain that helps publishers succeed without compromising user experience. This TAG certification brings us one more step closer to that goal.