Malvertising continues to plague the display market here in Europe, threatening publishers with severe losses in terms of ad revenue and resource required to unearth and remove unwanted scripts from ad servers. Increasingly criminals are seeing display advertising as an easy way to distribute malicious code and malvertising. The industry has been very active of late in combating and addressing the problem. The latest effort to protect publishers from this growing malvertisng threat comes from Admeld. Yesterday, it announced a global partnership with The Media Trust aimed at ensuring all ad impressions running through its platform are free from unwanted malware. The Media Trust's proprietary malware detection technology will enable Admeld to detect tags for malicious code before they are launched via publishers' sites. It is a necessary step given the growing sophistication of malvertisers in the display space. Instead of going after specific networks, criminals are now employing tactics similar to those used by DSPs and agencies for reach and better targeting across multiple inventory sources.

With European criminals viewing the automated channels as an easy opportunity to infect web users, it would appear that partnerships like this are no longer an add-on but absolutely essential. There has been a lot of industry talk in the past couple of months about the extent of the malware problem - but there has been little or no debate in the pages of the mainstream trade press. Perhaps the subject of malicious scripting is not as engaging as an Old Spice social media campaign. It should be given the size of the European display market. With the increasing move towards automation in the online ad market, I can see a lot of resource being invested in combating the threat posed by malware producers. Publishers will require this service more and more, as more European ad inventory is put through exchanges and supply side platforms. Details of the full release can be read below:

NEW YORK – July 27, 2010 – The Media Trust (www.themediatrust.com) today announced a partnership with AdMeld (www.admeld.com), the technology platform that helps premium publishers sell ad inventory smarter and safer. The integration puts The Media Trust’s powerful malware detection engine to work across billions of AdMeld-optimized impressions each month. The Media Trust uses proprietary technology to proactively identify malware threats and alert AdMeld to the source — before the tags can be launched and damage done.

“Over the past six months, malvertisers have grown increasingly sophisticated in their methods,” said Chris Olson, CEO, The Media Trust. “Instead of mounting network-specific attacks they have begun to target multiple demand sources simultaneously, employing the same tactics that agencies and demand side platforms use to achieve their own reach and targeting goals. This shift requires a fresh approach to the problem, and The Media Trust's global infrastructure, combined with AdMeld’s broad view of demand-side flow and supply-side inventory provides a unique capability to combat this growing threat."

“Today we’re announcing a new standard in malware protection for our customers and the industry as a whole,” said Michael Barrett, CEO, AdMeld. “With hundreds of publishers and demand sources transacting on our platform, maintaining a safe environment requires the technology to seek out a few, increasingly sophisticated needles in a large, ever-changing haystack. This is what The Media Trust does best, and we’re proud to partner with them on this.”

About The Media Trust Company

The Media Trust is the leading provider of online ad creative malware scanning, ad verification, and data transparency services worldwide. Media Trust's proprietary content monitoring technology protects yield managers, publishers, ad networks, and exchanges from malicious or otherwise unwanted creative running through their platforms or on their web sites. Media Trust verifies targeting and creative execution for thousands of media buys daily across 45 countries. Media Trust maintains the largest global infrastructure for geographic and behaviorial targeting verification to ensure campaigns are running correctly, reducing discrepancies and make-goods and providing solutions to identify and correct campaign errors in the process. Media Trust automates the support of traditional and mobile Internet advertising creative including display, rich-media, video, text and search and is integrated with leading ad serving and OMS solutions. Media Trust clients include AdMob, Advertising.com, Comcast, Hearst Newspapers, PointRoll, Yahoo, YouTube and over 300 additional agencies, publishers, ad networks and exchanges.

About Admeld

AdMeld helps the world’s top publishers maximize ad revenues, and sell their inventory smarter, safer and more efficiently. The company’s dynamic yield optimization technology connects with hundreds of sources of demand such as ad networks, exchanges and DSPs, and provides tools and analytics for publishers to better understand and monetize their audiences. Current AdMeld customers include Answers.com, AccuWeather, Discovery Communications, FOX News, Hearst Television, IAC, New York Post and more than 260 others worldwide. The company is headquartered in New York City with offices in San Francisco and London. Visit www.admeld.com