GARM expands membership to independent brand safety providers

Expansion formalises existing collaboration

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) has opened its membership to independent brand safety solutions providers, in addition to advertisers, media agencies, media platforms and industry associations. This is a significant expansion for the cross-industry initiative, which aims to eliminate ad support for harmful content on digital media platforms.

GARM has previously partnered with a number of ad tech companies and solutions providers on the organisation’s Brand Safety Floor and Suitability Framework, work which started in May 2020 with the IAB TechLab, also a member of GARM.

After several months of collaboration and expansion of GARM’s work, the GARM Steer Team recognised the need for a more structured way of working to help further drive standards and solutions into practice.

“Independent solutions providers are an essential part of the brand safety and suitability ecosystem, and we’re excited to have them join GARM and agree to work with us in a more strategic upstream way. We’re equally inspired to see their partnership and desire to work together. This uncommon industry collaboration has allowed for GARM standards and existing solutions to help address previous industry fragmentation,” said Rob Rakowitz, Global Initiative Lead for GARM.

The expansion will see GARM create a new working group – the Solutions Developers Working Group – which will bring together business and technology leaders from Channel Factory, DoubleVerify, GumGum, The Hive​.ai, IAS, Peer 39, Pixability, RTB House, Sounder and Zefr.

Through uncommon collaboration, solution feedback and assisting in creating new ways of thinking, the Working Group will help drive enhanced industry transparency, consistency, faster speed-to-market for GARM standards and solutions.

Members have already contributed to GARM’s insights and best practices relative to the War on Ukraine, working with the Alliance since March. With the formalisation of the new Working Group, they will actively develop new priorities in line with GARM’s goal of a safer digital ecosystem for brands and consumers.

This expansion marks a new phase in GARM’s journey, enabling it to accelerate the impact of industry-wide brand safety and suitability.