The File Moved
Fifteen companies said nothing. Five Senate offices said nothing. The FTC said nothing.
So the file went somewhere silence doesn't work.
Yesterday ADOTAT published its investigation into who got paid when ad tech ran brand advertising on an image host that NCMEC had flagged for child sexual abuse material for three years. Twenty-three companies got the same five questions. Fifteen never answered. The money column stayed mostly white.
Here's what you didn't see yesterday.
There is a companion report. It holds the full outreach record, every thread, every date, every non-answer, and the response grid row by row. It has been sent to law enforcement and to state attorneys general.
And I've been asked to be on standby to testify this year.
If you want a copy of the companion report, reply to this email and request it from me directly. I'll send it.
Yes, This Is Embarrassing
For them, mostly.
Nobody in this business wants their company's name sitting in a law enforcement file next to the words "child sexual abuse material." I understand that. I'm not enjoying it either.
But I asked nicely. Three, four, five times. I gave deadlines. I extended deadlines. I fixed my own addressing mistakes and restarted clocks. I told every company, in writing, that silence would publish as a blank cell.
They chose the blank cell.
So if it takes embarrassing people to get more done, so be it.
Let the people who don't like me keep calling me "the worst person in advertising." I'll wear it. For defending kids from abuse. For defending women from rape. For defending dogs. If that's the job description, I'm keeping the job.
The Companies That Went Past "This Is Wrong"
Anybody can say "abhorrent." It costs nothing. It's a press release.
These companies did the harder thing. They answered, on the record, with names attached.
TripleLift. Ben Felix answered all seven questions, a day early. Domain-level blocking. A quality team that doesn't report into revenue. A date: February 7, 2025. Publisher gone within 24 hours.
Zeta Global. Candace Dean answered all five. Network-level domain block. Commercial side not involved. And the only company in the survey to say the money should come back: "Zeta does not issue payment and will seek clawbacks from the applicable SSP."
Criteo. Named the exact DoubleVerify segments and the month it adopted them. The most checkable answer anyone gave.
Sovrn. Answered all five in writing. Domain-level blocking, every subdomain, every path.
Peer39. Mario Diez joined the IWF before the big verification companies did, and said the most honest sentence in the survey: "I can't speak to what platforms who are not integrated with us do."
TAG. Mike Zaneis answered the senators on time, asked to meet them, and built a partnership with NCMEC. More on that behind the wall, because it's the part that should make you angry.
And the individuals who didn't have to answer at all: Richard Murphy of the Alliance for Audited Media, Judy Shapiro, and Randall Rothenberg. Plus New York City's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, the only government office that picked up the phone.
That's the list. It's shorter than it should be. Every one of them made it longer than zero.