At the end of 2023, I resigned as UM Worldwide’s chief privacy and responsibility officer. I left behind the holding company agency model that is rife with competing interests and conflicting loyalties in order to have the independence necessary to push for meaningful change. In the spring of 2024, I found a perfect home at Check My Ads among a team of bold advocates who are unafraid to stand up and speak truth.
In my new role, I'm leading the organization’s program areas: policy, research & industry engagement, and communications initiatives, and we’re already making waves. One of our first big launches this year is a campaign on the industry-certified adtech vendors who for years failed to prevent funding a website known to host Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). And now, I’m proud to announce our 2024 Annual Report, where you can see the incredible impact we’ve been able to drive across the industry, through policy work, and in our global communications.
We’re just getting started.
You’ll be hearing from me again soon. In the meantime, thank you for championing our mission to create a fair and transparent digital advertising industry.
Because of your support, 2024 was one of our biggest years yet. We expanded our research and policy programs, and evolved our strategy to accelerate systemic change within the digital advertising industry. We built a coalition of 14 organizations and launched a website which housed resources and our daily coverage of the Google Adtech Trial, serving as a resource for journalists, civil society, and new industry allies. We informed, helped, educated, trained, and grew our global community of supporters who are committed to fixing the internet.
Our partner, Luminate, engaged us to research the monetization of Channel3Now, the website promoting a false article that incited the Southport Riots last summer. Our report, Digital Advertising and Its Role in the 2024 Southport Riots, was used to question Google by British Parliament. Watch the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee speak with Google’s managing director for trust and safety in Europe, Amanda Storeyon, on Parliament Live (timestamp 10:25:55 - 10:28:33).
The Committee chair Chi Onwurah MP noted that Members of Parliament had seen the evidence in our report that showed two firms, Google and Ezoic, monetized this website, to which Google acknowledged that this would violate their stated policies. “I would completely agree that monetising any form of low quality information, particularly associated with an atrocious real world attack, is absolutely not acceptable,” said Storeyon.
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