TAG, the Trustworthy Accountability Group, runs four seal programs: Certified Against Fraud, Certified Against Malvertising, Brand Safety Certified and Certified for Transparency. In a March 2026 announcement, TAG reported awarding 307 seals to 196 companies for 2026. A seal records that a company met one program’s guidelines. It is not a promise about any single impression.
What does each seal cover?
TAG says member companies that have achieved Verified by TAG status can then work with its team to earn any certification. Each seal covers one area:
- Certified Against Fraud: launched in 2016 to combat invalid traffic in the supply chain (TAG certifications page).
- Certified Against Malvertising: TAG says it has worked since 2014 on this program, which its page also calls the Certified Against Malware program (TAG certifications page).
- Brand Safety Certified: aims to reduce the risk of ads being misplaced on digital media, and to give buyers transparency, choice and control (TAG certifications page).
- Certified for Transparency: announced in November 2022 for companies that show high levels of transparency and accountability in their operations (TAG certifications page).
TAG describes its certifications as a way for companies to show they are working against fraud and criminal activity in digital advertising. Read a seal as evidence of a company’s practices in one area, not of how any one campaign turned out.
What does Platinum mean?
TAG’s 2026 announcement says Platinum status goes to companies that earn three or more seals, and that 32 companies reached it for 2026. TAG’s Platinum page uses the same three-or-more wording. Its certifications page instead says Platinum comes from receiving all available seals.
Because the pages differ, treat a company’s registry entry, not the Platinum label, as the record of what it holds.
How are seals checked?
In the 2026 round, 74 percent of seals were independently audited and 80 percent covered more than one market. That means about a quarter were not independently audited.
The same announcement says the TAG Registry lists, for each company, the specific seals awarded, the valid term of each seal, and whether the seal rests on self-attestation or on independent validation. Those three details are the useful part of the record.
Where does Project Brand Integrity 2.0 fit?
Project Brand Integrity began in February 2019 as a manual process: TAG alerted advertisers when their ads ran on pirate sites. TAG launched Project Brand Integrity 2.0 on February 28, 2024 to automate that. It is a pre-bid exclusion list of pirate domains, built through TAG’s AdSec Threat Exchange, and TAG describes it as part of the Brand Safety Certified program. “Pre-bid” means a domain is screened out before a bid is placed, so the spend never goes to it.
The release says the new list is paired with TAG’s existing Pirate Mobile App List, which names mobile apps that infringe protected intellectual property.
The release also said TAG planned to update Brand Safety Certified standards to require a piracy-related block list. As of October 2, 2026, the pages cited here do not say whether that requirement is in force. TAG’s brand safety page now describes a Pirate Domain Exclusion List built from contributions to the exchange. It says TAG does not select, curate or modify submissions, and that companies must do their own due diligence on listed domains.
What does this mean for a buyer?
Seals are one input. For any vendor, a buyer can do four things:
- Look the company up in the TAG Registry by name or TAG-ID.
- Read which seals it holds and whether each is within its valid term.
- Check whether each seal rests on self-attestation or independent validation.
- Match the seal to the risk. Each seal covers one area, so a fraud seal is not evidence of brand safety practices.
Path Check is a separate kind of control. It reads ads.txt, app-ads.txt and sellers.json, compares them with the SupplyChain object in each bid request, and supports made-for-advertising and pirate-domain exclusion lists.