The Global Alliance is creating a safe media ecosystem

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media has partnered with the World Economic Forum to improve the safety of digital environments, addressing harmful and misleading media while protecting consumers and brands.

GARM is an initiative of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and was launched in June 2019 in partnership with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) CMO Growth Council. GARM has joined the Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Sport as a flagship project.

The Alliance is leveraging the Forum’s existing network of industry, academic, civil society and public-sector partners to amplify its work on digital safety and to ensure that consumers and their data are protected online within a healthier media ecosystem.

The way media and entertainment is consumed and distributed has shifted radically over the past few years. The current landscape is being transformed by upended business models, consumer-driven content creation, and ever-changing terms of reference in the era of digital disruption.

With almost 3.8 billion people now online globally, the digital world offers significant benefits, but also poses the risks of harmful content. There is an opportunity to form a new media-ecosystem collaboration to tackle these risks successfully.

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media is led by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and brings together advertisers, agencies, media companies and industry organizations to improve digital safety at scale. Together, they collaborate with publishers and platforms to address harmful and misleading media environments, developing and delivering against a concrete set of actions, processes and protocols for protecting brands and consumers.

GARM focuses on viewer safety for consumers, reducing risks for advertisers, developing credibility for digital platforms and, more broadly, ensuring a sustainable online ecosystem. The Forum's Media, Entertainment and Sport Platform has led workshops on Advancing Global Digital Safety at Forum events since 2019 to generate new insights via a public-private cooperation framework.

In April 2021, GARM launched its first-ever measurement report for digital brand safety - designed to create transparency across the industry and a new benchmark for charting progress on removing harmful content from ad-supported media.

Partners involved in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media through the Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Sport include companies such as LEGO Group, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, NBC Universal - MSNBC, Dentsu Group, WPP (through GroupM), Interpublic Group, Publicis Groupe, Omnicom Group, Facebook and Google.

Together with members and partners on our Media, Entertainment and Sport platform, through initiatives like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, we are aggregating solutions to major industry disruptions while driving greater social cohesion and helping companies remain accountable to the global social good.

Businesses can join the Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Sport and apply to partner with the Alliance and similar initiatives. The Platform enables business, government and civil society to jointly reinforce key areas affected by the current era of digital disruption – addressing upended business models, consumer-driven content creation, and the ways media and entertainment can enable a more informed, united, and inclusive society.