In a response to a recent tweet, Elon Musk emphasized that Twitter avoids sharing how it verifies ads on the platform. Who conducts the audits? Where are the audits? These questions were raised by Andrea Stroppa, who noted that the only information about these audits can be found in a Twitter blog post titled “Expanding our Commitment to Brand Safety.”
These are the questions Twitter is trying to avoid at all costs…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2022
Andrea’s reply was part of a short thread that started with a report from Portal. Elon Musk’s lawyers have subpoenaed Integral Ad Science and Double Verify, two ad tech firms cited in the aforementioned Twitter blog post.
What Elon Musk and his legal team want from the two firms is any documents or communications regarding their involvement in reviewing accounts or participating in an audit of Twitter’s user base. Both companies use technology to independently verify whether or not digital ads are being seen by real people.
In response to Andrea’s questions, Elon Musk said Twitter is doing everything in its power to avoid answering those questions. In another tweet, Andrea pointed out that there are many audits in the auto industry and consumers can download a detailed report of the trials and results. Although Twitter makes billions of dollars from selling advertising and thanks the two advertising companies, Andrea isn’t sure what these companies actually do.
Twitter and Elon Musk are currently suing each other, citing spam, bots, fake accounts and fraud.
A study published by Integral Ad Science, one of the companies subpoenaed, is interesting. The 16th edition of the Media Quality Report was released in March 2022, and an interesting fact the study found was that global ad fraud rates “across all formats and environments” increased in the second half of 2021, with rates increasing by 4.1 %.
Germany and Australia saw the highest increases in invalid traffic targeting desktop video campaigns, and these “driven the ‘Optimized for Ads’ fraud rate to nearly 3% in both markets.”
Teslarati contacted Integral Ad Science and Double Verify for comments. So far they haven’t responded, but if they do, we’ll update the article.
Disclaimer: Johnna is Tesla for a long time.
Your feedback is important. If you have any comments, concerns or a typo, you can email me at [email protected]. You can also reach me on Twitter @JohnnaCrider1
Elon Musk draws attention to Twitter’s lack of transparency in ad reviews
