GroupM UK Joins The Conscious Advertising Network

17 February 2021, LONDON: GroupM UK, WPP’s media investment group, today announced it has become a member of The Conscious Advertising Network (CAN). Launched in 2019, CAN is a UK-based voluntary coalition of over 70 organisations, which share a vision to ensure industry ethics catch up with the technology of modern advertising.

CAN looks to address the lag between the advertising industry’s rapid evolution and industry ethics by establishing six best-practise manifestos encouraging brands, agencies and ad tech companies to keep ethics front of mind when making operational decisions. These manifestos include: Anti-Ad Fraud, Informed Consent, Diversity, Fake News, Hate Speech and Children’s Wellbeing.

GroupM UK’s commitment to CAN’s six manifestos, will complement the agency group’s robust and market-leading processes that are already in place, and support CAN’s objective to foster a collaborative exchange of best practices. By engaging with the network founded on shared responsibility, GroupM UK will contribute to the collective industry effort toward positive change and address today’s shared challenges.

For GroupM UK, this announcement is another crucial step toward achieving its global vision to make advertising better for people. Addressing how the industry uses advertising while keeping ethics at the core of its actions, the media investment group will contribute to guaranteeing not only user safety, but brand safety as well. Overcoming the challenges of current concerns, such as misinformation, and encouraging conscious and informed decision-making, will be instrumental to building a positive future for advertising.

Paul Rowlinson, Chief Customer Engagement and Growth Officer, GroupM UK, commented:

“At GroupM we have always put responsibility for the impact of advertising on consumers and society at the heart of what we do. We have been at the forefront of developments in brand safety and improving advertising experiences for consumers for many years and are committed to continually promoting the widespread adoption of ethical best practices. Joining CAN underlines this commitment and our desire to work collectively with the wider industry, sharing learning and ideas that will shape the next era of media to make advertising work better for people.”

Stevan Randjelovic, Brand Safety Director, GroupM EMEA adds: “CAN’s manifestos are at the heart of the shared industry battle for better and more ethical advertising. We are excited to share our best practices, and to learn from our peers. Our CAN commitment builds further on our actions and industry cooperation such as the recent announcement of the data ethics compass, leadership in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and TAG”.

Harriet Kingaby, Co-chair at The Conscious Advertising Network remarks, “We are extremely excited to have GroupM join the Conscious Advertising Network and our mission to stop advertising abuse, misinformation and harmful content. It is now more important than ever for the advertising industry to step up and work together to defund hate speech, misinformation and climate change denial, whilst helping to promote diversity & inclusion and ensure children’s welfare online. GroupM has already taken important steps to improve advertising ethics and best practises, and we couldn’t be more pleased with them joining CAN to continue their work and help us create a more ethical industry.”