GARM: 3 Years of Progress

Three years ago, the WFA led 16 organizations in the launch of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. GARM is a cross-industry initiative, launched by brands, to remove harmful content from ad-supported digital and social media. That challenge is big, however GARM has been able to develop a unique structure with focused areas for collaboration that have driven meaningful impact.

GARM’s launch was propelled forward by uncommon collaboration, a unique way of working recognizing that all sectors of the advertising industry and companies benefit from partnering to create new brand safety standards and solutions that could be accepted industry-wide, where there had been no established protocols.

From an initial set of 16 launch companies, we’ve grown to 122 members (61 advertisers, six agency holding companies, 11 media platforms, nine ad tech companies, and 35 industry associations). GARM has six active working groups, powered by 80 media leaders from a larger GARM Community. The Community meets monthly to review the progress of Working Groups and share best practices and thought leadership.

Along with our launch focus of advertisers, agencies, platforms and industry associations, we’ve set focused areas for engagement:

• Bringing advertising technology companies into a Solutions Developers Working Group to help us drive consistency in implementation and faster speed to market;
• Broadening membership to National Advertiser Associations to help us embed GARM work at the local level;
• Formalizing our ways of working with NGOs via a consult group to ensure our work isn’t insular to the advertising industry.