The Association of National Advertisers called on the biggest digital advertising platforms to allow independent audits by the Media Rating Council, which has long validated TV audience measurements.
The companies named by the ANA include Amazon, Foursquare, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat and Twitter.
The move follows a survey of ANA members. Nearly 90% of those responding said they supported the idea of audits for walled gardens.
With so-called walled gardens, data about a platforms audience is controlled by the media outlet, unlike TV, where a third party syndicates ratings and other information about viewing of particular shows and commercials.
Advertisers have been increasing their spending on digital advertising, in part because of the ability to use data to target audiences and get more detailed information about the impact of their campaigns. Recent revelations that some of the numbers from Facebook and Google were not accurate have spurred a demand for better access and revenue of their data.
This week three big TV companies, Viacom, Fox and Turner, joined forces in order to be able to standardize the data that is used in their targeted ad campaigns and make them more comparable across the industry.
(Photo via FamZoo Staff's Flickr. Image taken on May 25, 2016 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 9x16 aspect ratio.)
