GroupM Adopts Aggressive New Anti-Piracy Policy for Digital Media Buys

List of Banned Offenders Includes 2000-Plus US Sites

groupmGroupM has developed and adopted a pioneering new digital media buying policy designed to prevent its clients’ ads from appearing on websites that distribute illegally obtained content.

The policy is designed to actively oppose online piracy in all its forms and to protect the copyright-protected intellectual property of all content-producing companies.

The new, industry-leading policy includes anti-piracy language for insertion orders that prohibits vendors from placing GroupM clients’ advertising on sites that support piracy or contain any illegally distributed content. Effective immediately, the language will be built into all future contract terms and conditions with publishers and ad networks.

In conjunction with the new policy, GroupM has created a list of more than 2000 sites throughout the U.S. that have been identified as containing or supporting pirated content. The list will be updated on a continuing basis and a link to the list will be included in all contracts and insertion orders.

“We’re serious about combating piracy and protecting our clients’ intellectual property as forcefully as we possibly can,” said GroupM Interaction Global CEO Rob Norman. “This policy extends to digital media buyers at all GroupM agencies, as well as other WPP companies like Team Detroit, which manages Ford’s media business.”

GroupM, the world’s leading global media investment management operation, serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including Maxus, MEC, MediaCom, and Mindshare.

GroupM’s content-producing clients have been asked to share their own lists of offending sites with GroupM in order to help keep the list current and all have agreed to do so.

“Pirate sites are known to ‘domain hop,’ so we need to keep on top of the latest list of identified offenders as best as we possibly can in order to enforce this new policy to its fullest effect,” explained Norman, who also is CEO of GroupM North America.

About GroupM
GroupM is the leading global media investment management operation. It serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including Maxus, MEC, MediaCom, and Mindshare. Our primary purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP’s media communications agencies on behalf of our clients, our stakeholders and our people by operating as a parent and collaborator in performance-enhancing activities such as trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, proprietary tool development and other business-critical capabilities. The agencies that comprise GroupM are all global operations in their own right with leading market positions. The focus of GroupM is the intelligent application of physical and intellectual scale to benefit trading, innovation, and new communication services, to bring competitive advantage to our clients and our companies.

Primary Contact:
John Wolfe
GroupM
(212) 297-7160
(914) 659-8663
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