The following is the text of a letter sent by The Daily Wire to advertising industry professionals following the decision by the World Federation of Advertisers to discontinue the Global Alliance of Responsible Media. It follows a letter sent last month that highlighted an investigation into the Global Alliance of Responsible media by the House Judiciary committee. A PDF of the Friday letter can be viewed here.
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Second Open Letter to our Advertising Industry Colleagues
Re: GARM “Discontinuing” Operations
Dear Colleague,
The World Federation of Advertisers (“WFA”) has decided to discontinue the Global Alliance of Responsible Media (“GARM”), which was established in 2019 under the leadership of Rob Rakowitz.
This development highlights the need to address GARM’s legacy of coercively distorting advertising relationships in the name of “brand safety.” Mr. Rakowitz’s core position was that consumer signals demanded brands stay away from what GARM deemed to be unsafe content. To the contrary, the data clearly suggests that GARM and Mr. Rakowitz’s position on brand safety was not backed by research.
Moreover, GARM’s apparent willingness to use its Brand Safety Floor & Suitability Framework, as well as its “trusted partners” like GDI and NewsGuard, to attempt to bankrupt conservative media companies like The Daily Wire calls for reflection, and ultimately, meaningful reforms to reorient the advertising industry around performance, not ideology.
We at The Daily Wire believe that advertisers absolutely have the right to choose where they want to advertise. But we reject ideologically-driven structures which deprive companies like ours of the opportunity to compete for ad spend.
Additionally, we do not have a principled objection to brand suitability rating systems that focus on objectively criminal, abusive, and dangerous content. We do, however, believe that the subjective enforcement of inherently biased brand safety standards like “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and “debated sensitive social issues” threatens the free exchange of ideas which is foundational to healthy democracy and should come to an end.
As the post-GARM era begins, we seek to engage with advertisers, agencies, platforms, and other shareholders in the advertising industry with a goal of recommitting to objective performance-based metrics. The future of the advertising industry will be what we make it, so let’s engage in this discussion now.
We look forward to speaking with you soon.
With Kind Regards,
The Daily Wire
