Adalytics

"We at Adalytics believe that Quad has a proactive rather than reactive stance on media quality issues, actively looking into details that may pose reputational risk or undermine the effectiveness of clients’ media investments," said Krzysztof Franaszek, founder of Adalytics, in a statement. “Together we hope to further optimize media performance and give advertisers a holistic understanding of who and what their digital ads are funding.” Thank you to Ad Age & Jack Neff for the coverage. Read more about our partnership with Quad through the link in the comments.

Last Friday, a bi-partisan pair of US Senators sent a public letter to various leaders in the advertising industry, asking how it was possible that ads were funding a website known to host Child Sexual Abuse Materials since at least 2021. The Senators were not only asking for an explanation. They were also asking what the industry would do to ensure this never happened again. Over the last 10 days, the ad tech industry has come together as one team to work towards a future where digital ads cannot and will not fund child abuse. Journalists such as Thomas Germain, Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi, Sarah Sluis, Kendra Barnett, Jack Neff, Marty Swant, James Hercher, Travis Clark, and others spoke truth to power. Industry thought leaders such as Brian O'Kelley, Lou Paskalis, Ruben Schreurs, Adam Heimlich, Vinny Rinaldi, Justin Lebbon, Ali Manning, Jay Friedman, Joshua Lowcock, and others helped keep industry stake holders laser focused on solving the issues at hand. Amazon announced, "we are taking additional steps to help ensure this does not happen in the future.” Microsoft stopped serving ads on the website in question. Criteo announced “We are reviewing our process to minimize the chance of this happening again." Industry trade groups like the IAB Tech Lab have issued guidance on how the industry can "step up" by implementing various suggestions for better transparency and best practices to follow. ? Integral Ad Science "immediately labeled the domains listed in the report as ineligible for monetization" and " initiated a review." IAS "will take the learnings from this review into account as we re-assess our classifications for image-hosting sites on the open web and our practices for blocking and reporting sites that disseminate illegal content." DoubleVerify announced they are conducting "an additional comprehensive review" and deploying "stricter classification standards". Some advertisers have even reported that they have received written communications from their ad tech vendors that the vendors intend to start providing page URL level transparency in their reporting in the near future. As dramatic as they are, none of these changes in the industry would have been possible had it not been for the leadership and tireless work of Arielle Garcia and her Check My Ads Institute team. Arielle and team were instrumental in explaining a technical, jargon-rich research report into terms that the Senators and their staff could distill into precise, meaningful oversight action. Arielle educated the Senators and their offices on the intricacies of digital advertising, both technical and organizational, and helped them make sense of a tragic situation. The advertising industry at large benefits when its leaders work together to ensure a safer, better ecosystem.

Read coverage on our latest report from the BBC. Link in comments.

Full Report - Are ad tech vendors facilitating or monitoring ads on a website that hosts CSAM? https://lnkd.in/gZPV_uGg

Are Ad Tech Vendors Facilitating or Monitoring Ads on a Website That Hosts CSAM? Link to full report in the comments.

Adalytics is happy to see our research on Made for Advertising (MFA) sites recognized as one of AdExchanger's most-read stories of the year. While we focus on delivering actionable insights and optimizations for our brand clients, we also take pride in our public interest work, which has directly helped many brands mitigate waste and improve transparency. Thank you to AdExchanger, James Hercher, and Sarah Sluis for covering this piece of research. Our findings in 2024 highlighted that, despite commitments from media agencies and SSPs to reduce MFA inventory in 2023, many continued transacting on these sites. While research like ours has driven improvements in the ecosystem, we strongly believe no brand should be subject to MFA delivery. This remains an ongoing issue, and we believe it warrants further public discussion in 2025. To help advance that dialogue, we’ll be publishing another MFA transparency report in 2025 to highlight how this issue continues to impact the programmatic ecosystem. It’s worth considering whether some agencies—including, potentially, Principal Media buying arms—are still transacting MFA inventory on behalf of brands. We look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue through our public interest work around this topic in the new year ahead.

Adalytics applauds the U.S. Department of Justice National Security Division’s finalized rule on protecting Americans’ bulk sensitive personal data and data on U.S. Government activities and personnel. Adalytics previously worked with the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the United States Senate Committee on Finance to identify a serious data leakage by a major technology company that was exposing meta-data about NATO-countries' citizens to a Kremlin-controlled Russian data broker sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). This threat intelligence research was covered by Craig Silverman and ProPublica. Adalytics’ cyber threat intelligence work and the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's actions helped cease this leakage of sensitive personal meta-data to the OFAC sanctioned Russian data broker. Adalytics is committed to safeguarding US national security and Americans' sensitive personal data. Read more about Adalytics' work to protect US national security here: https://lnkd.in/e3FuxjN8 (ProPublica) #nationalsecurity #homelandsecurity #sanctions #OFAC #threatintelligence #cybersecurity #adalytics

How Transparency Empowers Advertisers to Drive Accountability At Adalytics, we aim to equip advertisers with the insights they need to make informed decisions and hold their partners accountable. Recently, a leading brand leveraged findings from one of our reports to uncover a significant media delivery issue. After reviewing screenshots and analysis in our brand safety technology report, including one of their ads appearing on a page related to abusive content, the advertiser discovered that what was promised as a curated premium media package had instead been delivered as a run-of-network inventory. This underscores the importance of not assuming curation works as intended but verifying it through independent checks. Armed with this information, they approached their supply partner and secured a substantial make-good credit for the erroneous delivery. This case highlights the value of independent reporting in empowering advertisers to identify and address discrepancies on their own. By providing transparency and actionable insights, we enable brands to maximize the value of their media investments while fostering greater accountability across the ecosystem. We’re proud to support the advertiser community in their pursuit of media quality and transparency.

We’re honored to be recognized by Ad Age as one of the most impactful ad tech stories of the year. As the leading technology company driving actionable insights, transparency, and optimization for the world’s largest brands—and helping defend the United States against foreign surveillance and cyber threats. Our research into Made for Advertising (MFA) sites—including the initial report on the prevalence of MFA followed by research uncovering a hidden MFA operation on Forbes, published in collaboration with the Wall Street Journal (Patience Haggin)—highlighted that MFA schemes continue to evolve. These schemes are no longer limited to obscure, longtail publishers but are increasingly being implemented across platforms and publishers traditionally considered premium. What many don’t see is the work we do behind the scenes. This year, our unpublished efforts led to another tier-one premium publisher quietly shutting down their MFA operation. It’s a testament to how far Adalytics goes to defend brands—fighting without publicity or thanks to protect marketers and the broader digital ecosystem from exploitative practices. This is a complex and persistent challenge for the programmatic ecosystem, and Adalytics remains committed to helping marketers navigate it. Looking ahead to 2025, we’ll be revisiting the evolving MFA landscape with updated research and findings. Marketers, stay tuned. Thank you to Ad Age for the recognition, and to our partners and clients for trusting us to help make digital advertising more transparent, secure, and effective. And thank you to all the reporters who have covered our work over the past year. Jack Neff James Hercher Kendra Barnett Ronan Shields Marty Swant Jessica Heygate Catherine Perloff Tim Cross-Kovoor Link in comments below.

If you’ve ever wondered why frequency caps don’t seem to work, Adalytics CEO Krzystof Franaszek explains it perfectly in a recent Ad Age article by Jack Neff: “It can be difficult for a media buying platform to de-duplicate bid requests arriving at the same time and/or to synchronize the media buying platform’s user and ad frequency databases. This problem can be compounded in situations where a very large number of intermediaries are representing the same ad inventory and consumer to media buying platforms at the same time. Selective participation in ad auctions can help reduce the scale of this problem for media buying platforms.” High ad frequency isn’t just an accident—it’s often baked into the system. Programmatic marketplaces, auction duplication, and fragmented identity tracking all contribute to poor frequency management. For marketers, this underscores the importance of inventory curation to ensure your campaigns are efficient and effective. At Adalytics, we work to demystify these challenges and help brands navigate the complexities of frequency management to optimize their media investments. Check out the full article in the comments for insights into why frequency capping often falls short and what you can do about it.