• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 8, 2020

Publishers on Tuesday gained technology that allows them to monitor discrepancies that might appear in appropriate and safe ads.

AdWatch, a visual programmatic transparency tool from ad-security company GeoEdge, monitors these transactions through patented behavioral-code analysis, advanced malware detection, landing page and content analysis, and anti-cloaking technology.

Content-based click scams are on the rise, thanks in part to the pandemic and the increase of activity online this past year. Amnon Siev, CEO, GeoEdge, believes AdWatch addresses this new type of malicious attacks that publishers continue to face.

Performance is confirmed by the publishers' ability to view the ads running on the programmatic exchanges. 

The technology allows publishers to view ads in real-time to identify those that might be inappropriate for kids, but appropriate for others on another app or website. This is intended to eliminate false positives for publishers, with software that might make a mistake due to the inclusion of certain words, symbols or spam -- a mistake that can inadvertently block non-deceptive or non-malicious ads.

For example, the software might deny an ad that appears as questionable on a page or in an app for kids or in a video of a PG-13-rated movie.

It turns out 49% of publishers inadvertently block non-deceptive or malicious ads in their quest to keep sites and apps safe for advertisers and readers, which can sacrifice revenue, according to an earlier study with 88 publishers and marketers. This data supports why GeoEdge is announcing AdWatch as the first tool to also enable viewing each ad.

Some 69% of publishers say that they encounter a moderate or large number of deceptive ads per week, according to a previous survey from GeoEdge.

About 47% of advertisers say they have sometimes avoided certain publishers entirely — or ended publisher relationships — due to deceptive ads that have run on their sites.

GeoEdge's technology aims to eliminate the strains on publisher and advertiser relationships by using behavioral analytics to identify specific exploits or mechanisms of an attack, and then creates a signature or fingerprint to block the specific programmatic tag before any damage can occur.

Based on the performance of the product, GeoEdge received Frost & Sullivan's 2020 Global Advertising Integrity and Verification Customer Value Leadership Award.