SafeGuard Privacy has won the 2026 AdExchanger Award for Best Privacy Technology for the second time, along with being a finalist each of the last four years and winning in 2023. We’re proud of the recognition, but the bigger story is what the award reflects: years of building privacy technology for an industry that has become dramatically more complex, from evolving regulation and increasingly interconnected data ecosystems to the rapid adoption of AI. And a lot goes into this win.
We’ve built privacy infrastructure the industry is using
For an industry that has historically managed diligence through questionnaires, spreadsheets, PDFs, and endless back-and-forth, putting that work into a single system makes a real difference.
That’s why the IAB chose us to power the IAB Diligence Platform. We’re giving companies across the digital advertising ecosystem a standardized way to conduct privacy diligence on their technology partners.
The platform brings standardized assessments, legal and ad tech expertise, and auditable documentation together in one place. Companies now have a consistent way to evaluate their partners, and those partners have a more efficient way to respond.
This isn’t generic technology. This is infrastructure built for how the advertising industry actually works.
We’re creating standards
Our work doesn’t stop at building software. We built the standardized assessments behind the IAB Diligence Platform, giving the industry a shared standard for privacy diligence. Now we’re bringing that standard to Europe through our work with BVDW and Nexida in Germany, including certification for the European market.
We’re also building privacy diligence into the specs that will shape the industry’s future. SafeGuard Privacy is integrated into IAB Tech Lab’s AAMP 2.3, bringing privacy diligence into the Buyer Agent as the industry moves toward agentic advertising. Bots don’t have time to check in with procurement teams, so we provide the privacy signal that lets them move without waiting on a human.
Privacy technology needs to keep pace with the industry. That means being involved as standards are developed, not trying to catch up afterward.
We put legal and ad tech expertise into the product
Managing privacy diligence is complex and requires legal expertise to understand laws and regulations, as well as how data flows through digital advertising. So we built the product accordingly. Our assessments incorporate legal expertise across 24+ U.S. states and global privacy requirements, along with digital ad industry-specific questionnaires designed around the way data moves through advertising.
That foundation matters as companies deal with more jurisdictions, more vendors, and more complex data relationships. The software needs to make the work easier without losing the legal context.
We’re using AI to solve a real problem
AI is everywhere in advertising. We’re interested in AI that makes complex legal work easier and better. Our AI product, Privacy Assist™, is designed to help with the parts of privacy diligence that have traditionally taken significant amounts of manual time. Privacy Assist AI is our built-in intelligence layer, drawing on existing policies and completed assessments to suggest answers, draft RFI responses, and search across your vendors, assessments, and the law itself.
AI is a tool. The value comes from applying it to a problem companies genuinely have. So we’re making privacy diligence faster and more scalable without removing legal expertise from the process.
And companies are putting it to work
Our customers span the advertising ecosystem, including major advertisers, agencies and holdcos, publishers, DSPs, data suppliers, and more that rely on consumer data. They’re using SafeGuard Privacy to manage privacy diligence across their businesses and technology relationships.
Adoption is the clearest sign we’re solving a real problem. Companies need to evaluate vendors faster. Vendors need to answer diligence requests without starting from scratch every time. Legal and privacy teams need documentation they can rely on. And everyone needs to keep up with requirements that seem to change month to month.
That is the problem we set out to solve.
A word from our Co-Founder and CEO, Richy Glassberg
“When we started SafeGuard Privacy, the industry handled privacy diligence with spreadsheets and hope. Now it runs through a shared standard, inside the IAB Diligence Platform and the Tech Lab’s agentic buying specs. Seeing AdExchanger recognize that shift, for the second time, means a lot. The next shift is already here. As AI agents start buying media on behalf of brands, diligence has to move at machine speed without losing its legal rigor. That’s what we’re building now, and I’m proud of the team doing it.”