The health and safety of an exchange depend upon its participants
Online security is a problem as old as the internet itself. Despite the ongoing efforts of the computer software and security industries to combat threats such as viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other malicious code, we and other online businesses, find ourselves in an arms race with the perpetrators, who continue to launch attacks with increasing sophistication. Unfortunately, advertisers, agencies, networks, publishers and consumers are becoming more vulnerable to these insidious new threats, which threaten not just the online advertising industry, but the Internet economy as a whole.
What can you do?
As frictionless trading between ad networks becomes more and more important, advertisers are looking for innovative ways to maximize their return on investment and publishers are looking to limit the amount of unsold inventory. Liquidity in the marketplace should not come at the expense of quality, and we are committed to balancing the revenue or performance goals of our customers while at the same time helping them to drive a positive user experience. This means that all stakeholders must be even more diligent about whom they do business with and use reputation as one of the determining attributes, instead of relying solely on revenue. If we sacrifice quality, there is a much higher risk of driving away brand advertisers who are turning to performance advertising as a more targeted, measurable and cost-effective marketing strategy.
Since the Right Media Exchange is an open technology platform that our customers—advertisers, agencies, networks and publishers—use to do business more directly and with greater visibility and control, we are not involved in ad creation or in the purchase or sale of online media. That’s why the overall health and safety of our marketplace depends on the efforts of all platform participants.
The Right Media approach
Our approach to combating threats to the Exchange includes trying to proactively implement industry-leading safeguards that protect our customers, their constituents and, ultimately, their end-users.
For example, all creatives or ad tags that run through the Exchange are tested by our Creative Tester technology (part of Media Guard) in an effort to detect and ban creatives exhibiting malicious behavior such as viruses and program installs, or that display attributes we consider to be high risk. Creative Tester subjects every creative or ad tag trafficked into the Exchange to a series of tests which simulate an impression, load the creative and record the technical attributes detected during the creative load. When Creative Tester detects certain types of malicious behavior, it automatically deactivates the creative and notifies the Exchange member who trafficked the creative or ad tag.
The Exchange also uses an automated detection program called SCOUR that checks Exchange traffic regularly, searching for patterns exhibited by desktop software and flagging sections that exhibit what, in our opinion, may be malicious traffic patterns. If we detect that some or all impressions from a particular section of a site on the Exchange have been initiated by applications that are prohibited by our policies, they are automatically deactivated (thereby making them ineligible to receive further ads via the Exchange and to generate any revenue for the publisher).
Keeping up the fight
Our continued investment in protective measures and the implementation of mechanisms like the ones highlighted above are helping Right Media protect all participants in the Exchange ecosystem from potential harm. However, attackers continuously find new, sophisticated ways to circumvent safeguards and malicious software applications continue to evolve in their behavior and delivery methods. We’re always working to understand these new threats so we can develop tools that can weed them out as quickly as possible.
Although the task at hand is challenging, we believe that by partnering with Exchange participants who are equally committed to eliminating these threats at their source, we can make meaningful progress. Right Media welcomes all thoughts and suggestions on this important issue because we believe that if we work together, we can maintain our leading position as the largest, healthiest and most successful online Ad Exchange on the market.
—Nilesh Zacharias, Director, Policy and Operations
