Incopro Validated by the Advertising Industry to Help Brands Avoid Advertising on Pirate Websites
London, United Kingdom, February 11, 2016 (Newswire.com) - Incopro, a market-leading online rights monitoring and brand protection service, has been validated by the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) to help protect brands against association with pirate websites.
Incopro research has revealed that advertising revenue is the lifeblood of the majority of these websites, providing the economic incentive for their operators[1]. Incopro’s ‘Identify’ system will help advertisers and their ad agencies to avoid damage to their brands from ad placement on websites that facilitate the distribution of pirated content and/or illegal dissemination of counterfeit goods.
TAG CEO Mike Zaneis, said "The TAG initiative is a turning point in the fight against ad-supported digital piracy. Services such as that being offered by Incopro will give brands and their media partners the tools to effectively keep their digital ads off infringing sites. Diminishing the revenue for these criminals will undermine illicit activity in the ecosystem and allow brands to regain control of their brand integrity".
Mike Zaneis, TAG CEO
Brands can now state that they only want to work with media companies who are “TAG certified”. The media companies can ensure that advertising is only being placed with legitimate websites that do not infringe intellectual property rights. Identify will enable digital advertising entities to look-up in real time whether a site is infringing according to a TAG approved ‘infringement index’. This initiative is critical in altering the digital advertising ecosystem and ensuring that advertising revenue is directed only to legitimate websites and not to those whose business model is premised on online theft.
Incopro is a market-leading software and intelligence company, which already provides brands with global protection against counterfeiting across all major online platforms ensuring intelligent, strategic and targeted enforcement. Incopro’s Identify system provides intelligence by identifying, tracking and analysing website hosts, advertisers and payment providers that support online infringement.
TAG CEO Mike Zaneis, said “The TAG initiative is a turning point in the fight against ad-supported digital piracy. Services such as that being offered by Incopro will give brands and their media partners the tools to effectively keep their digital ads off infringing sites. Diminishing the revenue for these criminals will undermine illicit activity in the ecosystem and allow brands to regain control of their brand integrity”.
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Notes:
About TAG:
TAG is an advertising industry initiative set up by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to help combat piracy in the digital communications supply chain.
About Incopro:
Incopro uses innovative technology and expert intelligence to protect the value of leading brands and content companies. Incopro enables rights owners to identify major threats, take targeted action and shape ongoing strategy to protect their intellectual property online. Incopro is a privately held company headquartered in London.
For press enquiries, please contact Ruth Anderson : ruth.anderson@incopro.co.uk
[1] Incopro has analysed the top 250 unauthorised sites (according to Incopro’s Alexa estimated usage metric) in the 5 largest European Union Member States (which constituted a total of 622 unique sites) and analysis of the sites observed that the vast majority of the sites carry advertising (88.4%) and that ad revenue represented their predominant funding source (Incopro Report, ‘The revenue sources for websites making available copyright content without consent in the EU’, March 2015.