The spread of bad ads is pretty bad in general, but since 2017— throughout the security software industry — cryptojacking has been known as the Evil Overlord (most menacing and most prevalent) of all cyber threats. Hackers looking to get rich quick from mining cryptocurrency illegally are the culprits, and…
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There are plenty problems to be solved in the ad operations world, including issues like IVT, bad ads, malware, and much, much more. So at every Publisher Forum, we bring together all of the noobs (yes, I meant first-time attendees), put them into small workgroups, and open the gates for…
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Were you worried that blockchain was all hat and no cattle? Look again—the decentralized ledger is disrupting the payments landscape while also overhauling reconciliation. At the same time, Senior Editor Lynne d Johnson points out a huge (but surmountable) challenge: speed.
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Our new Senior Editor Lynne d Johnson dives into the "Principles for a Better Programmatic Marketplace," an open letter to the industry from six exchanges that seems to grant programmatic buyers all their transparency wishes—fee transparency, no hidden auction machinations, traffic filtered for IVT... We're surprised they didn't throw a…
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Speaking of transparency—or the lack thereof—plenty of questions linger around the FBI raiding a major holding company's offices as it steps up its investigation into rebates and kickbacks in digital advertising. Gabe Greenberg suggests that if we're going to circle the wagons as the g-men close in, the industry should…
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You know what unfortunately is already too easy? Delivering malware to publishers via the open programmatic marketplace. The latest high-profile case involves a fake company called "Amobi" (not to be confused with the legit Amobee) dropping malicious code through a wonky Claritin ad. As tempting as it is to roll…
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In its eye-opening new report on ad quality , Confiant finds that 1 out of every 200 ad impressions from the open exchanges is malvertising. If 1 trillion ads are being served through the open marketplace monthly, Confiant estimates that 5 billion are malicious. Make sure you have smelling salts…
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It's not your imagination—most malvertising attacks do happen over weekends. Bad actors hope to catch ops when its guard is down, so the gatekeepers must always be vigilant. A robust ad-quality solution is an essential tool for a publisher, but finding the right one requires a great deal of due…
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Particularly with the digital signature initiative Ads.cert, OpenRTB 3.0 is going to be a major leap forward for transparency and anti-fraud efforts in the programmatic space. But of course there's a catch—version 3.0 is not backwards compatible, meaning SSPs, DSPs, and other intermediaries have a lot of code re-writing on…
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It's been reported this week that 1,400 mobile apps loaded ads on TV Guide's domain. How did this happen, in an age when everyone's on board with Ads.txt? Well, the answer is simple, but it's not what you want to hear: The buyers just hadn't been scanning those Ads.txt files…
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