Case Study

Venatus Media Eliminates Malicious Redirects and Streamlines Operations

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Company

Venatus Media is an ad technology platform focused entirely on gaming and entertainment. The company manages ad sales for many of the largest gaming websites and apps in the world with a diverse mix of digital opportunities. They work with many of the largest advertisers in the world to engage gamers, drive ROI, and create brand awareness. 

- Matt Cannon

COO at Venatus Media
"The two things that really struck me about cleanAD were how easy it was to integrate into our stack, and how quickly and immediately it completely ended our battle with malicious redirects. It was truly a total solution, unlike the other products we tested."
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Challenge

Venatus Media experienced an onslaught of malicious redirect attacks, and their Ad Ops team was spending countless hours fighting malicious ads. Despite their attempts to go upstream and work with SSPs to fix issues, large-scale weekend attacks resulted in publishers actively removing Venatus tags from their systems. 

Venatus Media experimented with several of the major anti-malvertising tools on the market, but none resolved the issues. The company needed a holistic solution that would eliminate malvertising attacks, clear up time for their Ad Ops team, and help rebuild trust with publishers. 


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Solution

HUMAN cleanAD uses a behavioral blocking strategy that gave Venatus Media exactly the solution they were looking for, with several key functionalities:
  • Full-Stop Protection: cleanAD uses technical analysis of each ad render to detect and block malvertisers from hijacking ad inventory with harmful redirects, malware, and heavy ads. 
  • Preserve Publisher Revenue: cleanAD’s behavioral approach to catching bad ads lets malvertisements render on-page before being blocked. This means publishers still get paid for their ad impressions, raising cost without reward for malvertisers.
  • Easy Integration and Maintenance: cleanAD swiftly integrated into Venatus’s existing stack with no maintenance needed from engineering. The behavior-based learning library continuously updates to offer automatic protection, without relying on traditional sandboxing and blocklist techniques.
  • Unmatched Customer Service: The team at HUMAN works regularly with Ad Ops teams to provide regular monthly reporting along with important insights to help them improve operations.

RESULTS

 After Venatus Media implemented the cleanAD tag, the faucet of malicious activity was immediately shut off. The Ad Ops team went from fielding an average of 10 to 25 complaints per week to none—overnight.

Within the first few days of implementation, Venatus Media saw the following results:

  • Renewed reputation: After struggling to maintain relationships with clients, cleanAD gave Venatus Media the confidence to ensure publishers that their sites were 100% protected.
  • Restored work hours: Prior to implementing cleanAD, Venatus Media’s three Ad Ops team members spent 50% of their time tracking down bad actors or dealing with frustrated publishers. With the solution in place, the team saved 60 work hours a week on average. 

After running cleanAD for over a year, the Venatus Media team has had only a single complaint ticket submitted. They hardly even think about malicious redirects anymore and incorporate cleanAD protection into their value proposition to new publishers

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