Protected Media

In late December, the digital security firm White Ops released a report outlining a sophisticated video ad fraud scheme that it estimated was stealing $3 million to $5 million from marketers each day. The report generated an unprecedented amount of media coverage in outlets including CNN, The New York Times and CBS. However, as we at Protected Media were saying right from the start, the report's estimates of the financial impact of fraud were far lower than stated. In the words of Mike Zaneis, president and CEO of the digital ad industry's Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG): "It was not millions of dollars a day, Not a chance." Click here to read the full article from Ad Age. Zac

Ad hackers are becoming more sophisticated in stealing budgets from advertisers. Symantec researchers discovered three malicious apps on Google Play that collected ad revenue by clicking on ads while running in the background. The three apps used three separate techniques: Delayed attacks Self-naming tricks An attack list received from a command and control server [C&C] Each of these techniques is relatively common on their own, but have not been seen together.  You can read the full report from Symantec here . At Protected Media, we've already flagged those apps as bots even before the post from Symantec. Since our technology can identify bots, regardless of the technique used, we were able to protect our clients from these malicious apps. - Zac