Automation Marketing What Benefits Can Hybrid Automation Offer Ad Compliance Agencies? Srilata Sridhar Jun 16, 2020 8 mins read Blog What Benefits Can Hybrid Automation Offer Ad Compliance Agencies? With the growing trend of industries like pharmaceutical, finance, engineering, and FMCG in the US relying on online advertisements and promotional tactics, there is more focus on these types of advertisements to adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, as well as other local and regional advertising guidelines. The advertisements and websites of these industries and many more need to be fool-proof and unerring. The FDA closely monitors such companies, meaning ad compliance agencies have to be at the top of their game in identifying the ‘culprits’ and prevent their clients from getting in the bad books with the regulators. Ad Compliance: A Crucial Yet Costly Endeavour As per Title III of the ADA, it is mandatory for websites to be accessible to people with various disabilities, offering an equal opportunity of access for all. This means businesses with eCommerce pages and websites need to be accessible to those with vision, hearing, or motor skill impairment, as well as photosensitive seizures, and other cognitive disabilities. On top of that, ads and other types of media published have to be compliant too. The FDA now also monitors meta tags, sponsored links, ad banners, site links, callouts, etc. This requires a deeper dive by ad compliance experts which further increases the scope of their projects and associated costs. Much like pharmacists’ everyday work, advertising in the pharmacy sector needs to be as meticulous as possible when it comes to adhering to advertising regulations. Photo Credit: National Cancer Institute 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 as it requires design and development expertise and ad compliance experts to closely monitor the message. Giants like Dominos, KFC, and Harvard have erred in the past and were required to remove the ads after receiving consumer complaints about being misleading. The fines for breach of the regulations run as high as $500,000 USD for a misdemeanor by a corporation and $250,000 USD by an individual in case of a death or a felony. This puts these companies at risk of criminal prosecution, litigation, and huge penalties if their ads are fraudulent and misleading. The FDA does not shy away from enforcing warning letters, injunctions, and criminal prosecution in case of violation with the misdemeanor Act. In 2020, the FDA had sent warning letters to six companies who were suspected of selling fraudulent COVID-19 products preying on public fear around the virus. “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 as it requires design and development expertise and ad compliance experts to closely monitor the message.” Clearly the services of ad compliance agencies and ad compliance experts are vital in preventing companies from expensive lawsuits, and ensuring that their clients’ brand enjoys goodwill in the market. Their services also play an important part in risk mitigation. But due to the high costs involved, some companies are wary of opting for these agencies. These costs are mainly attributed to task-oriented and time-intensive processes. But what if there was a platform designed for ad compliance agencies to solve this very problem quickly and effectively? How Hybrid Automation Can Help Ad Compliance Agencies In 2020, we are all asked to do more and it’s no different in the ad compliance sector. Ad compliance experts now have to monitor compliance on new digital and interactive platforms as well. Hybrid automation allows ad compliance agencies to do what they do best – get results. This increases overall productivity and ROI on manpower as well as reducing costs. Hybrid automation platforms like Wrk combine the best of automation and human ingenuity to offer results that are faster and more accurate. They also help you streamline your ad compliance processes and build synergies in areas that your organization may want to develop. 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. This is where hybrid automation of ad compliance comes into the picture. “Hybrid automation allows ad compliance agencies to do what they do best – get results. This increases overall productivity and ROI on manpower as well as reducing costs.” As one of the innovators of the human-automation revolution, Wrk enables ad compliance agencies to automate end-to-end tasks that are repetitive, monotonous, and time-consuming. This means that the essence of ad compliance is left to the experts, who can then focus on creating messaging that is easily understood by the public and accurately defines the benefits of the product. 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. 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 chosen from their library of Wrk Actions™. They are then completed by bots and humans depending on the task. More and more people are working from home due to COVID-19. This may have caused additional challenges on your team’s cohesion and efficacy. Photo Credit: Scott Graham This process also helps maintain full visibility of the tasks to be carried out and the assigned manager can view the progress on a real-time basis. The automated tasks have been clearly defined 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: Simply 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. A workflow for an ad compliance report would be carried out using the following steps: Search and identify relevant ads across all specified paid ad channelsExtract ad copy from each ad, including video and image formats Verify ad compliance against the provided checklistClassify each ad as Compliant or Non-CompliantAggregate results in CSVPopulate Compliance Dashboard WRK is designed to reduce the cost per process by 20% and reduce the delivery time by 65%, with their current Ad Compliance Wrkflow running with an average cost of verification of <$2.00/Ad. The seamless breakdown of end-to-end tasks through hybrid automation enables ad compliance services to increase efficiency of their business processes. This means they can cut significant time-taken for client deliverables, and 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. The cost and time involved in carrying out the processes can be significantly reduced through hybrid automation. This allows experts to focus on identifying the key problems rather than wasting productive hours carrying out menial tasks. Wrk hybrid automation empowers businesses to optimize their productivity, maximize their costs, and streamline their processes for the long-run. To learn how you can redefine work with Wrk, check out our Redefining Wrk Page. Share This Article Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email