Companies use online ads and promotions more often, so it's more important than ever to follow universal compliance and other local and regional advertising rules. With the popularity of social media sitting at an all-time high for information, it has become more and more crucial to be compliant. The “rules” are a complicated mix of industry regulations and federal, state, and local laws.
The advertisements and websites of these industries and many more need to be fool-proof and unerring. The FDA keeps a close eye on these companies, so ad compliance agencies must be careful to keep their clients out of trouble with the government. Privacy and data protection might seem like buzzwords, but they should not be ignored. The limitations and specific rules must be known and followed.
Ad Compliance: A Crucial Yet Costly Endeavour
Title III of the ADA requires that websites be accessible to people with various disabilities, providing equal access to all. Because of these rules, eCommerce pages and websites must be accessible for people with hearing, sight, or motor skill problems and those with photosensitive seizures and other cognitive disabilities. On top of that, ads and different types of media published have to be compliant too. The FDA now monitors meta tags, sponsored links, ad banners, site links, callouts, etc. Ad compliance experts have to dig deeper to maintain a compliant standard, which makes their projects bigger and adds to the costs.
One of the most challenging things about making websites and ads comply is that the client has to pay for the extra costs. The process takes a lot of time and requires designers, developers, and ad compliance experts to watch the message closely. Even big names have made mistakes in the past and were forced to remove misleading advertisements after receiving consumer complaints.
Fines for breaching regulations run as high as USD 500,000 for a misdemeanor by a corporation and USD 250,000 by an individual. These infractions put these companies at risk of criminal prosecution, litigation, and huge penalties if their ads are fraudulent and misleading.
The consequences of not being compliant
When people break the misdemeanor act, the FDA has no trouble sending warning letters, getting injunctions, or going to court.
"One of the key challenges in making websites and advertisements compliant is that the client has to bear the additional costs. The process is also time-consuming, requiring design and development expertise and ad compliance experts to monitor the message closely."
Ad compliance agencies and experts are essential for avoiding expensive lawsuits and ensuring their clients' brands have a good name in the market. Their services also play a vital role in risk mitigation. But due to the high costs involved, some companies would prefer to opt for these agencies. Task-oriented and time-intensive processes are costly. But what if a platform was designed for ad compliance agencies to solve this problem quickly and effectively?
How the Wrk Automation Platform Can Help Ad Compliance Agencies
Today, everyone at the top asks us to do more with less. It's no different in the ad compliance sector. Experts in ad compliance now also have to keep an eye on compliance on digital and interactive platforms. Hybrid automation allows ad compliance agencies to do what they do best—get results. Adopting automation increases overall productivity and ROI on resources and bandwidth and reduces costs.
Automation platforms like Wrk combine the best of automation and human ingenuity to offer faster and more accurate results. They also help you ensure your advertising is aligned with the law and find ways to work together in areas where your organization may want to grow.
While traditional automation is available for ad compliance procedures, it is rarely completely thorough or 100% accurate. Ad monitoring requires a human nuance and comprehension that sometimes full-scale automation platforms like Zapier miss. And human-only approaches are time-consuming and cost-intensive. Guaranteeing human input is where the hybrid automation approach comes into the picture.
"Hybrid automation allows ad compliance agencies to do what they do best—get results."
As one of the innovators of the human-automation revolution, Wrk enables ad compliance agencies to automate end-to-end repetitive, monotonous, and time-consuming tasks. Ensuring that humans stay involved means that human experts are responsible for maintaining compliance. While the Wrk Automation Platform is working in the background, creators and designers can focus on creating messaging that the public quickly understands and accurately defines the product's benefits.
Find Online Ads in Minutes for Your Ad Compliance Reports
The problem with modern automation systems is that you often have to change your existing processes to make them compatible with the specific tool or the platform's software. Thankfully, that's where Wrk is different.
"The goal of regulations is to protect the public, so if you’re unsure that you are meeting compliance standards, think like a customer. Is your message clear, will your customer understand it, and is there anything that is deceptive?" <cite>Sandra Peterffy, Wrk Snr Compliance Officer</cite>
Wrk is dedicated to helping organizations reach their maximum potential by breaking down complex processes into simple digital workflows. These workflows can be customized or you can choose them from a library of Wrk Actions. Then bots and humans complete each task.
This process helps you keep track of all your tasks, and the manager in charge can see how things are going at any time. You must clearly define the process to ensure accuracy and speed.
A Quick Look at a Real-World Example
So how would this work for an existing ad compliance team? It would go something like this: Specify the category of ads in question, and watch as the Ad Compliance Wrkflow carries out an extensive search for online paid ads across Google Ads, Youtube, Facebook, and LinkedIn and extracts each ad's content regardless of its format.
Carry out a workflow for an ad compliance report using the following steps:
- Search and identify relevant ads across all specified paid ad channels
- Extract ad copy from each ad, including video and image formats
- Verify ad compliance against the provided checklist
- Classify each ad as Compliant or Non-Compliant
- Aggregate results in CSV
- Populate Compliance Dashboard
We designed the Wrk Platform to reduce the cost per process by 20% and the delivery time by 65%, with their current Ad Compliance Wrkflow running at an average verification price of <$2.00/Ad.
With hybrid automation, compliance services can break down tasks to make business processes more manageable. Adopting this automation approach means they can cut significant time from client deliverables. It can also reduce the total cost of the budget, which in effect, increases the revenue margins for the agency.
Hybrid Automation is an Efficient Way to Streamline Business
Ad compliance is a dynamic process with many moving parts. Hybrid automation will significantly reduce the time and cost spent to complete it. The saved time lets experts focus on figuring out what the real problems are instead of wasting time. The Wrk Platform empowers businesses to optimize their productivity, maximize their costs, and streamline their processes in the long run.
To learn how to redefine work with Wrk, check out our Redefining Wrk Page.
