From the executive summary of CYA 2025: Digital Media Under Assault
As consumers flocked to news and political websites for the latest updates on the 2024 US presidential election, the phishers flooded the ad pipes to meet them. The Media Trust’s real-time threat prevention script, Media Filter, blocked a stunning amount of malvertising starting in the wee hours of Nov 6, 2024 — 6X the daily average for 2024, and primarily phishing redirects headed for news publications.
While traffic spikes usually are accompanied with jumps in malicious ad activity, a surge of this magnitude was unprecedented. The next week brought a new barrage in bogus tech support schemes targeting seniors on news and political sites.
It was an unfortunate preview of the chaotic times ahead in 2025. The amount of ad tags with malware has grown 4X year over year.
This growth in attacks comes at a challenging time for the digital media ecosystem. Publishers on the open web face mounting challenges monetizing traffic as AI chat engines and social media hold consumers tightly in their grips. Key to grabbing and keeping engaged audiences is offering safe environments where consumers can digest content and enrich their lives.
But that safe environment is becoming ever harder to deliver as the need to drive revenue and fill ad slots forces publishers to lower programmatic floors and bring on additional partners with questionable security capabilities. These openings leave threat actors drooling in anticipation — particularly as they appear to have found high-performing attacks and consistent places to launch them.
In addition, threat actors continue to cultivate their craft, introducing new levels of obfuscation that hijack the assets of legit advertisers and sophisticated evasion techniques that leverage fingerprinting to a stunning degree. Malvertisers drastically increased their volume of attacks in 2024 by using video units to deliver phishing redirects. And purveyors of scareware and backdoors are improving their ability to hyper-target the most vulnerable consumers online like seniors and minors.
Earning consumer trust is essential for the open web’s survival, and that is built on a foundation of security. This report will help you Cover Your Assets for 2H 2025 and beyond — whether those assets are websites, apps, or ad platforms. With intricate details on evolving threats and action steps, we aim to help you protect consumers — and your business.
Download CYA 2025 Now
