As the ninth installment of our quarterly market report declares, the state of the digital advertising market is good–and growing! Through Q1 2010, the Rubicon 20 Index, measured through proprietary algorithms that track performance across a roster of 20 of the Web’s most heavily-trafficked properties, displayed 25% growth year over year. And merger and acquisition activity in the online advertising sector grew 28% compared to Q1 2009, as technology and innovation continues to drive growth in the industry. In this report, we evaluate the emerging technologies and developments in the space, including DoubleClick’s relaunch of DART for Publishers (DFP), the impact of RTB; and the increasing threats posed by ever more sophisticated versions of malware:
[Excerpted from the 2010 Online Advertising Market Report: Q1 Emerging Trends & Outlooks]
Brands and revenue are at risk
Tracking and stopping malware has been a nearly impossible process with many publishers still unable to detect and stop malicious ads before the a flurry of consumer complaints start coming in, by which time the brand’s reputation has already been damaged. A few more examples of malicious attacks on popular websites and ad companies include:
- Yahoo Top Ad Malware Distributor, Says It’s Not Their Problem, according to TechCrunch
- CA Predicts More Malvertising, Mac Attacks in 2010, as reported by eSecurity Planet
- Avast Indentifies Malvertising Strain, according to BizReport
Customers expect Web sites to protect them. Of course, this would not be such a problem if endpoint security suites protected end users but that is not the case. Today the products on consumer and business desktops, like those offered by market leaders Symantec (Norton) and McAfee, are struggling in this modern-era of dynamic and polymorphic threats and simply do not offer sufficient protection against these new, unknown, and fraudulent attacks on users.
“For publishers, advertising is about making money, but malicious ads change the equation. Publishers need better solutions to protect their customers from malvertising and the potential for malicious content on their Web sites,” noted Rob Lipschutz, co-founder and CEO of SiteScout, a company whose technology protects publishers against malicious ads and other dangerous Web content.
“The advertising ecosystem faces a stiff challenge and the problem is widespread and found in both direct advertising as well as more distributed ad networks. New ad formats also make the problem increasingly complex.”
Given that much of the ad serving technology still on the market today was developed in the late 1990’s, those products are not equipped to deal with today’s huge volume of different buyers and sellers from around the world, which creates a constant stream of new vulnerabilities in the system.Agencies and advertisers have their own way to tag ads and publishers don’t have control, as there are thousands of different ad tags running on a publishers’ site at any given time. These disparate systems have had no universal quality control because nothing is tied together, driving the need for automation and technology innovation to eradicate the vulnerabilities of this process.
The need is clear for a solution aimed at publishers and advertising companies, the producers of content, rather than end-users, that provides visibility and advanced protection against the new kinds of attacks to prevent direct loss of revenue or risk to brand (leads to loss of revenue). In January, the Rubicon Project launched Rubicon Security, its first foray into protection against malware attacks on publisher customers’ sites. The issue of malware will only increase as a key risk to publishers’ advertising businesses – and to the consumers who drive those businesses with their patronage – in the months ahead.
To read the full Q1 2010 Online Advertising Market Report, as well as past published reports for free, visit: http://www.rubiconproject.com/market-intelligence
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