Dentsu Integrated Report 2018

Inappropriate Domestic Digital Advertising Business Practices in 2016

An in-house committee—that was formed on August 15, 2016, included outside professionals (attorneys), and was chaired by then-senior executive vice president and CFO Shoichi Nakamoto— drew on advice from third-party professionals (certified fraud examiners and accountants) regarding instances of inappropriate or potentially inappropriate practices within the digital advertising services provided by Dentsu and some Dentsu Group companies in Japan. The committee identified related issues and their causes, and formulated measures to prevent their recurrence.

In January 2017, after having investigated approximately 214,000 invoices issued for digital advertising services in Japan between November 1, 2012, and July 31, 2016, projects involving unsuitable practices were reported individually to advertisers.

The following measures have been adopted to prevent a recurrence of such practices.

1. Since 2016, the independently established Business Process Management Division’s Digital Confirmation Section has conducted inconsistency checks on media placement and transaction data. As of this publication, not a single case of impropriety has been detected.
2. We implemented business process reengineering to digitally manage advertising, conducted an extensive inventory of operations, and formulated a standardized work flow in November 2017. From 2018, business process auditing will be conducted by an auditing firm.
3. As part of our promotion of system compliance, in February 2018 we implemented a major overhaul of our online ordering system. This improves work efficiency and accuracy by coordinating advertiser and Dentsu order data and reduces posting and confirmation work. During 2018, this will be linked to reporting and alert systems as we promote further automation.