RhythmOne Receives Recertification of Trustworthy Accountability Group Seal for "Inventory Quality Guidelines”

RhythmOne plc (LSE AIM: RTHM), a global advertising technology company, today announces it has received its 2018 seal recertification for Inventory Quality Guidelines (IQG) from the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). This recertification affirms that RhythmOne is utilizing IQG disclosures for ad inventory to help partners understand and limit their ads to brand safe environments.

To qualify for annual IQG recertification, TAG requires RhythmOne to vet Publishers manually and perform a quarterly audit to help ensure publisher properties continue to be ranked and categorized by content category properly. Further, TAG reviewed and approved RhythmOne’s policies and procedures regarding onboarding new publishers and advertisers, complaint handling and resolution, and methodology.

The mission of the IQG Program is to reduce friction and foster an environment of trust in the marketplace by providing clear, common language that describes the characteristics of advertising inventory and transactions across the advertising value chain at four points in the transaction process: inventory acquisition, inventory evaluation, creative evaluation, and transaction execution. Further, the guidelines prohibit the sale of any inventory within categories of illegal content such as drugs, bombs, theft and online pirating, spyware/malware, hacking, spamming, warez, or copyright infringement.

"Brand safety is something we take very seriously at RhythmOne,” states Ted Hasting, CEO of RhythmOne. "Our IQG recertification reinforces RhythmOne’s commitment to brand safety, and it is intended to offer our customers heightened assurance that their advertising will be displayed in only quality, transparent, and trustworthy environments. We will continue to engage with TAG and serve on their committees to help define emerging ad quality standards and requirements.”

"Effective certification programs set a high bar for compliance and then raise that bar each year, so participating companies like RhythmOne must continuously improve their standards and maintain best practices,” said Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG. "By meeting the rigorous recertification requirements of TAG’s IQG program, RhythmOne is setting a high standard to improve transparency of the supply chain and ensure the brand safety of partners.”

Additional information about TAG’s programs and the application process for TAG Registration and TAG’s seal programs are available on the TAG website.

About RhythmOne
RhythmOne drives engagement between advertisers and targeted audiences – resulting in real, measurable business outcomes. We offer fully integrated, cross-screen solutions that span desktop, mobile, and connected TV ("CTV”) across high-impact video, rich media, display, social, and native advertising formats – ensuring advertisers reach high-propensity audiences wherever and however they consume content. The connections we make are further enhanced through unique audience data and powered by our unified programmatic platform, RhythmMax. RhythmMax includes unique verification technology, RhythmGuard, which ensures quality audiences in brand safe environments. This end-to-end platform – coupled with the world-class service of our account teams – provides more direct, efficient, and effective connections, driving ROI for advertisers and publishers. Founded in 2004 in the UK, RhythmOne is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in the US, UK, Europe, APAC, and Canada. For more information, please visit www.rhythmone.com.

About the Trustworthy Accountability Group
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is the leading global certification program fighting criminal activity and increasing trust in the digital advertising industry. Created by the industry’s top trade organizations, TAG’s mission is to eliminate fraudulent traffic, combat malware, prevent Internet piracy, and promote greater transparency in digital advertising. TAG advances those initiatives by bringing companies across the digital advertising supply chain together to set the highest standards. TAG is the first and only registered Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO) for the digital advertising industry. For more information on TAG, please visit tagtoday.net.

Numis Securities Limited (”Numis”), which is authorised and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority is acting for the Company and no one else as nominated advisor and UK broker and financial advisor only and will not afford the protections afforded to clients of Numis to any other person. To the fullest extent permitted by law Numis expressly disclaims any liability whatsoever arising out its role and/or of the contents of this announcement to any person other than the Company.

Forward-Looking Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including those in management quotations. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the words "may," "will," "expect," "intend," "plan," "objective," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "project," "potential," "continue" and "ongoing," or the negative of these terms, or other comparable terminology intended to identify statements about the future. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, brand safety and ad quality standards. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could cause actual results and the timing of events to differ materially from future results that are expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include the dynamic and rapidly evolving sector, as well as the highly competitive industry that RhythmOne operates in, which make it difficult to evaluate prospects. These and other risk factors are discussed in RhythmOne’s Annual Report for the period ended March 31, 2017. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to RhythmOne as of the date hereof, and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

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