Save 50% on a 3-month Digiday+ membership. Ends Dec 5.
The spectrum of malvertising runs on an axis from irritation to destruction. At its more benign end are ads that bob and weave on screen, frustrating the users chasing them away. At its most malicious, ransomware deployments—think WannaCrys and Anglers—reach up from the dark web to block access to a computer’s operating system, trading a users’ freedom for the right Bitcoin price.
The cost of these attacks is not trivial. In 2015, Interactive Advertising Bureau pinned the total cost of combating malvertising at $1.1 billion, with a total cost of $8.2 billion from vulnerabilities in the digital ad supply chain.
Programmatic advertising has a lot to do with it. “Most of the companies that are in our world don’t sell close to 100 percent of their ad inventory,” said Tobias Bennett, head of programmatic at the Local Media Consortium, a network of more than 75 companies including Tronc and McClatchy who collectively run more than 1,700 websites. “They sell 30 to 50 percent of their inventory, and that’s on the higher end. They rely on this lower third-party fill.”
Once a publisher’s remnant inventory trickles far enough down the waterfall, it can fall prey to the malware hackers that make their scant living off of their dark exploits. The funny thing is, there’s no Hollywood-style mad hacker flow-state-coding his way onto a computer, just a motivated con artist who can follow instructions.
To learn more about just what it takes to hack into a publisher platform and how publishers can keep their readers safe, download the guide now.
More from Digiday
Ulta, Best Buy and Adidas dominate AI holiday shopping mentions
The brands that are seeing the biggest boost from this shift in consumer behavior are some of the biggest retailers.
Digiday+ Research Subscription Index 2025: Subscription strategies from Bloomberg, The New York Times, Vox and others
Digiday’s third annual Subscription Index examines and measures publishers’ subscription strategies to identify common approaches and key tactics among Bloomberg, The New York Times, Vox and others.
U.K. retailer Boots leads brand efforts to invest in ad creative’s data layer
For media dollars to make an impact, brands need ad creative that actually hits. More CMOs are investing in pre- and post-flight measurement.
Ad position: web_bfu