McDonald’s and Tesco have become the first leading UK brands to publicly pledge their support for the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) UK’s ‘Gold Standard’ certification.

The pair have committed to working with certified digital advertising suppliers where possible and will encourage suppliers that aren’t certified to sign up to begin their journey toward certification, while educating their internal teams about the initiative.

“We’re delighted to be among the first advertisers to support IAB UK’s Gold Standard. It’s in all of our best interests to collectively raise online ad standards, as we strive to communicate to our customers in the most helpful, relevant and effective way,” said Nick Ashley, head of media and campaign planning at Tesco. “The IAB Gold Standard is a clear start to building better standards across the industry; moving forward we also encourage all stakeholders to agree a single industry-wide set of standards that we can all get behind.”

The Gold Standard was unveiled in 2017 before beginning at the start of 2018. The initiative aims to clean up the digital advertising ecosystem by bringing together programmes for tackling ad fraud, increasing brand safety, and increasing transparency.

As per the stricter criteria introduced by the IAB UK earlier this year, companies need to implement IAB Tech Labs’ ads.txt, become certified under the JICWEBS Digital Trading Standards Group (DTSG), and follow the principles set out by the Coalition for Better Ads in order to achieve a Gold Standard certificate.

“Since its inception, Gold Standard adoption has been really strong. The fact that advertisers are now getting behind the initiative is crucial in cementing its effectiveness,” said Tim Elkington, chief digital officer at IAB UK. “Tesco and McDonald’s are leading by example when it comes to advertisers’ responsibility to improve digital advertising. It’s only by having all parts of the industry on board that we can affect real change.”