MCLEAN, VA, September 9, 2021—The Media Trust, global leader in quantifying and managing digital risk, has launched a thoroughly upgraded Media Filter, the fastest and smartest real-time ad-creative blocker for digital media companies. The reconfigured ad quality solution features a bold new architecture that greatly expands publishers’ ability to block or notify on ad-related security threats; sensitive or problematic content within creative; scam or deceptive ads; and heavy creative that causes page latency and mars user experience.
As data from The Media Trust shows the amount of malvertising in the ad ecosystem has increased 67% in the last 12 months alone, publishers need advanced controls to protect consumers from overt malicious activity, low-quality ads, and performance-sapping ad experiences. This includes the ability to shut off high- or medium-risk ad platforms that have displayed a propensity to serve harmful advertising, and stop scam ads with false claims about products or services.
Publishers also need greater control over increasingly contentious ad content—the ability to block inappropriate or offensive ad content; manage controversial ad subject matter like marijuana and gambling; and identify heavily regulated verticals such as pharmaceutical and political.
With a new intuitive interface, Media Filter now empowers publishers to block or notify in real-time on a variety of ad-related security risks, user experience challenges, and sensitive content, including:
- Malware based on original-sourced blocklists curated 24/7 by The Media Trust’s highly experienced Security & Operations team
- 15 Sensitive Ad Content Categories, including Adult, Alcohol, Gambling, Marijuana, Pharmaceuticals, Political, and more
- High- and Medium-Risk Ad Platforms that have brought significant risk to the advertising ecosystem and consumers
- Scams and Deceptive content that uses false claims to promote products or services, or solicits personal data (PII) from consumers for dubious purposes
- Heavy Ads that negatively impact user experience by using large amounts of device resources
- Custom Lists, such as competitor domains, that can be uploaded and edited within the interface
“With the data-driven ad marketplace in turmoil, it’s critical for digital publishers to forge tight relationships with their audiences to ensure future revenue,” said Chris Olson, CEO of The Media Trust. “Nothing destroys those relationships like delivering poor or harmful ad experiences. With malvertising and sensitive ad content hitting unprecedented levels, Media Filter offers publishers robust tools to keep their audiences safe while also ensuring high-quality ad experiences that won’t turn off consumers.”
Figure 1: Media Filter’s upgraded configuration controls, including easy-to-use toggles for turning on and off blocklists, make ad quality management simpler than ever.
Rather than identifying problematic creative content through advertiser self-declaration, the Media Trust’s sensitive ad content categories are populated by a home-grown categorization system that leverages AI for rapid creative analysis that is verified by human analysts. This fuels highly refined categories as well as industry-leading accuracy, with a less than 2% false positive rate.
The Media Trust’s malware analysis runs far deeper than ad quality competitors, going beyond immediate threats like auto-redirects and malicious software downloads to identify advertising with malicious landing pages, phishing schemes, and other consumer dangers. For an extra layer of security, Media Filter’s Redirect Deterrent identifies and freezes malicious redirect code before it can execute.
Also new in Media Filter is the ability to block scam and deceptive low-quality advertising that has been investigated and verified by the Digital Security & Operations team. This group also curates the High- and Medium-Risk Ad Platform blocklists based on long-running and extensive monitoring of the digital advertising ecosystem. Publishers can now better set their security profile, or throttle platforms with checkered pasts during intense malware barrages.
“With the data-driven ad marketplace in turmoil, it’s critical for digital publishers to forge tight relationships with their audiences to ensure future revenue,” said Chris Olson, CEO of The Media Trust. “Nothing destroys those relationships like delivering poor or harmful ad experiences.”
Media Filter’s reimagined configuration screen (Figure 1) makes ad quality management more straightforward than ever before. Lists for malware, sensitive categories, user experience, and custom domains can be easily turned on and off, along with a simple toggle for switching between notifying or blocking. Custom configurations can be made for each of a publisher’s sites, or for multiple properties. Reporting can be filtered by lists and actions, including demand source attribution. Publishers can insert custom code for recovery ads when creatives are blocked, and instantly grab an updated Media Filter script for their on-page or creative wrapper integrations.
The new capabilities are now available for current Media Filter clients. To learn more about the updated Media Filter and apply for a free 45-day trial, visit https://mediatrust.com/media-filter-trial/
About The Media Trust
The Media Trust is on a mission to make the internet a healthier, more valuable place for publishers, AdTech providers, enterprise, and consumers. Working with the world’s largest, most-heavily trafficked digital properties and their upstream partners, The Media Trust delivers real-time security, data privacy, performance management and quality assurance solutions which help protect, monetize and optimize the user experience across desktop, smartphone, tablet and gaming devices. More than 600 enterprises, media publishers, ad networks/exchanges, and agencies—including 40 of comScore’s AdFocus Top 50 websites—rely on The Media Trust to protect their website, their employee internet use, their revenue and, most importantly, their brand. www.MediaTrust.com.
