Why care?

Advertising has the power to shape society and drive our economy. Industries with far less influence and reach than ours are being held to a higher standard when it comes to addressing bias at the core. It’s time for the advertising industry to hold itself accountable.

We’ve made significant improvements to eliminate deep-seated prejudice and inequality. The creative we see today, for example, is far more balanced and representative of all consumers versus the chosen few that were historically featured.

However, the same level of effort has not been applied to the advertising technology that enables connections between brands and consumers.

As we reinvent the advertising technology infrastructure with consumer trust at the center, we must build a system that addresses bias in the technology that powers the entire marketing industry. It’s a business imperative and it’s the right thing to do.

 

Bias in advertising technology

In the summer of 2021, The Weather Company announced a research initiative using Artificial Intelligence to gauge the prevalence of unwanted bias in digital advertising and explore how to reduce it. We proved our hypothesis right: bias exists in advertising technology, and AI can help identify and mitigate it.

After sharing our initial research findings in January 2022, we began to enhance tools, data and AI models to create powerful open-source technologies that can help automate bias mitigation in advertising.

 

Take action

We are on an industry-wide mission to get brands, agencies, industry associations and ad tech providers to join us and to commit to addressing bias in advertising so that we can create a fairer, more equitable industry – together. Here’s how you can take action:

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Explore the Advertising Toolkit for AI Fairness 360
Open-source collection of metrics, algorithms and fairness explainers

Access the Toolkit for free
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Additional resources

Free, open-source Advertising Toolkit for AI Fairness 360

Industry leaders to act to mitigate bias in advertising

AI Could Mitigate Bias in Advertising Tech

Mindshare & GroupM Data Ethics Solutions

Partner Resource

IAB AI Standards Working Group Guide

Partner Resource

ANA/SeeHer Gender Equality Measure

Partner Resource

Let’s talk

What’s your weather strategy? To learn more about increasing campaign efficiencies and personalizing messages at the most relevant moments, contact our advertising experts today.

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