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Dear friends,
I’d like to announce with enormous pride that I am stepping down from my role at Check My Ads.
When we launched Check My Ads in late 2021, we envisioned a grassroots advocacy organization that would hold the digital advertising industry accountable for running your ads in places you don’t want them, without your knowledge.
Today, I can say we’ve exceeded those expectations. We’ve not only brought much-needed public attention to this shady trillion dollar ecosystem, Check My Ads is now entering a new chapter of its mission: building a truly transparent advertising marketplace.
This is more than I ever dreamed possible. In 2019, Claire and I started a newsletter to share the shocking things we were learning about the adtech industry. Today, Check My Ads has become the industry’s indisputable watchdog — led by a dogged (heheh) team that shares our commitment to broad, systemic change. From here, there’s nowhere to go but up.
That being said, it’s time for me to hit the road. I’m a marketer at heart. I feel most alive when I’m bringing new ideas into the world, changing hearts and minds and helping people feel empowered. And I’m feeling the pull to start a new chapter of my own.
What does that mean? I’d like to explore the possibilities. For now, I will be opening up a consulting shop to work with a variety of clients, ranging from tech to non-profits and movement-building. Please reach out!
My last day at Check My Ads will be May 31st. Moving forward, the team is in capable hands — my business partner Claire is at the helm and I trust her to take Check My Ads to the next level, and many levels after that.
Thank you to everyone for the support over the years! We’ve truly done amazing things together.
With love,
Policy Updates🇺🇸
✔️ HUGE news! This week, a landmark ruling affirmed that for over a decade, Google engaged in anticompetitive conduct to secure and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets. “Today, we are one monumental step closer to a fair and competitive digital advertising market,” said our Director of Policy, Sarah Kay Wiley. We’ll have a lot more to say about this next week, so sign-up for our in-depth trial analysis here.
✔️ Comprehensive privacy legislation isn’t just necessary — it’s the lifeline the digital advertising industry desperately needs. Today’s digital advertising ecosystem is built on a crumbling foundation of unchecked data extraction and opaque intermediaries who profit more from volume than value. In our comments to the House Energy and Commerce Privacy Working Group, we outline the need to reimagine digital advertising in a way that respects privacy, restores consumer trust, and creates a level playing field for market participants. A strong federal privacy law can and should achieve these goals — by reining in harmful data practices, closing exploitative loopholes, and defining clear roles and responsibilities across the ecosystem.
✔️ Alongside the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards (CSS), we joined 80 groups to oppose any attempt to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) in an unprecedented and improper fashion.
✔️ We joined twenty groups including American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) to urge the FTC to resume open meetings and comment dockets. These tools are essential to enforcing antitrust laws, ensuring transparency, and encouraging robust public engagement.
⚖️ Our COO Arielle Garcia spoke with Adweek on the privacy issues at stake in two new lawsuits that allege the adtech giant The Trade Desk harvests identifiable user information such as emails, and phone numbers and uses it to build user profiles for real-time bidding. This would be a violation of California’s wiretapping laws and federal privacy standards.
“I’d anticipate continued pushes at the state level, both for strong privacy legislation—as we’re seeing in Vermont and Massachusetts—and via private litigation like this. So, I wouldn’t sleep on this.”
🎤 At the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement’s (CIMM) summit in New York City, our COO Arielle Garcia spoke out on the systemic issue of fraud in connected TV advertising in a lively discussion with experts from all sides of the marketplace. The big consensus? Ad fraud is everywhere—and it could be costing the industry anywhere from $1 to $7 billion in fraudulent CTV ad impressions a year.Arielle pointed out that the way things are set up right now actually discourages accountability.
"Who exactly are we appealing to to be responsible?" Check My Ads Institute COO and former Chief Privacy & Responsibility Officer at Interpublic's UM unit Arielle Garcia asked rhetorically, noting: "This is now baked into the commercial model of holding companies, as well.”
👏 The 2025 CIMM Summit East panel prompted deeper exploration of what it would take to create real accountability and transparency in the digital advertising industry. The main takeaway: it’s time for the ad world to face some hard truths and start putting transparency front and center.
“But while the industry clearly needs to get better at calling out fraud from within, it may take outside regulation for changes to really stick, said Garcia, who cited a recent Vermont bill that Check My Ads helped introduce to the state legislature. If passed, the bill would establish both KYC rules and duty of care obligations so ad tech vendors would be legally required to act in the best interests of their advertiser and publisher clients.”
