Malicious advertising attacks (malvertising) have been plaguing mainstream sites and their visitors a lot these past few years.
While some are easy to spot and get rid of, others tend to be much more sophisticated and hard to shine light on.
On Saturday 11th, we discovered a malicious advert that was displayed on huffingtonpost.com as well as other popular sites, such a Zillow.com. This advert was used to deliver the Cryptowall ransomware via a Flash exploit.
The ad was loaded by a third-party advertiser (servedbyadbutler.com) initially called by delivery.first-impression, where it won the real-time bidding auction for $2.31 CPM (cost per thousand impressions).
An audience member at Tuesday’s Programmatic Insider Summit in Scottsdale, AZ, told the private exchange panel that he has been told from some “open market exchange people” to look into private marketplaces because his company isn’t winning enough bids on the open exchanges.
How common is this, the ad buyer wondered, and is it a legitimate suggestion?
Brian Brownie, director of advertising operations at eBay, noted that a common misconception is that supply is limited in private marketplaces; that if an ad-buyer is worried about entering a private marketplace because it will limit their scope, that isn’t necessarily true. (Obviously, it depends on which private marketplaces are joined.)
“The supply is not necessarily limited by the fact that the priority has now changed,” said Brownie. “[On the open exchange], there are 10,000 buyers, and everybody is level,” he exclaimed. “Then you step into the private world, and you have 100 buyers. The inventory is the same — it just means they get to go in through the velvet rope.”
Advertising isn’t what it used to be. It’s more precise than at any other point in history. According to LinkedIn Influencer Tim Cadogan, “programmatic advertising” is expected to “grow tens of billions of dollars” by 2020, but what is it?
First there was “paid search” which peaked at the turn of the century and finally became a $58 billion industry–and paid search is still going strong. However, the growth of programmatic is outpacing even that of paid search. Is programmatic advertising set to leave paid search in the dust?
“Advertisers’ demand for viewability is frustrating for publishers, who must contend with new contracts, new billing structures and new ways to value inventory, all while ensuring meeting viewability standards doesn’t erode ad revenue,” writes AdExchanger.
At the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Phoenix, AdExchanger notes that about half of the publishers said they have sold campaigns based on viewability.
But what “viewability” means is still up for debate, even after the Media Rating Council (MRC) spelled out its standard (50% of the pixels being in-view for at least one second).
AOL reported its fourth quarter 2014 earnings this morning, and noted that its programmatic revenue grew 250% on the year as a whole, accounting for 39% of the company’s non-search and other revenue during the quarter.
AOL reported total revenue of $710.3 on the quarter, missing estimates by just over $11 million. It’s stock price has taken a sharp decline as a result — shares of AOL were down over 11% on the day at press time.
The company’s Platforms unit — which houses a growing ad tech stack — became profitable in 2014 after pulling in over $1 billion in revenue, AOL reported.
