Unanimis introduces new measures to safeguard publishers and advertisers against malware

Unanimis has taken extra measures to protect its publishers and advertisers against the potential threat of malware by partnering with The Media Trust, the US’ leading ad verification and malware monitoring provider.

The ad network which exclusively represents the UK’s largest network of online publishers has become the first UK-based ad network to partner with The Media Trust to offer its publishers an extra level of protection and transparency from malware and data leakage.

The move comes after Unanimis became a victim of a malware attack in March of this year, which resulted in a number of infected creatives running across their network. The breach is believed to have come from hackers gaining access to their ad server and altering the ad creatives with malicious code.

Although the infected ads were detected and removed immediately, it did highlight the ever growing threat malware poses not only to ad networks but the wider industry and that more verification was needed.

The Media Trust’s solutions, already used by over 300 companies worldwide in the online and mobile advertising ecosystem, will provide Unanimis with their Media Scanner suit of services that includes a creative audit of all campaigns as well as a continuous scan of all ad tags across the Unanimis network to look for any overt or potential malware.

David Nelson, Unanimis’ IT & Operations Director said “We are really pleased to be partnering with TMT. The service we will be providing is fundamental to user and site security. We hope to see all parties involved in ad delivery adopt similar solutions as quickly as possible”

By working with The Media Trust, Unanimis also benefits from the combined knowledge and malware monitoring occurring across The Media Trust’s network of clients, helping Unanimis thwart malicious activity before it reaches Unanimis’ network in most cases. The Media Trust’s scanning process can also identify data leakage related to advertisers, DSP’s or third party data exchanges, which can lead to users being targeted off the Unanimis network resulting in lost advertising opportunities.

“We are excited to announce our partnership with Unanimis and integrating at the ad server level is a great step towards ensuring Unanimis’ publishers protection from malvertising,” said Chris Olson, CEO of The Media Trust. “Partnering with Unanimis provides another significant scale point for seeing and stopping malvertsing in the United Kingdom and across Europe, and provides incremental benefit to all of our partners and the industry as a whole. We are also pleased to be working with Unanimis towards providing transparency on data tracking pixels and flash cookies, placing Unanimis at the forefront of ensuring that publishers and networks are in compliance with guidelines coming soon from industry associations in the United Kingdom and Europe.”

About Unanimis
Unanimis is the UK’s largest exclusive digital advertising network specialising in branded and performance display advertising, across internet and mobile.
Acquired by the Orange France Telecom Group in Aug 2009, Unanimis now incorporates Orange.co.uk and Orange Mobile Portals into their ad network offering.
Unanimis creates value from online audiences for both advertisers and publishers. For advertisers, Unanimis identifies and targets relevant audience segments to help
maximise ROI and meet their marketing objectives. For publishers, Unanimis monetizes their advertising inventory to maximise site revenue from their audience.

Unanimis sells advertising to leading media and advertising agencies and direct advertisers who are looking to reach a relevant audience through the internet and mobile.
It meets the advertisers’ objectives, whether it is to drive brand awareness, convert a customer through direct response channels or retarget an existing customer.

About The Media Trust (TMT)

The Media Trust, the leading provider of ad verification, creative malware and data scanning services since 2004, confirms advertising campaign launch and creative execution for thousands of media buys daily; providing placement and impression-level assurance for orders running in 45 countries. The Media Trust maintains the largest global infrastructure for geographic and behavioral targeting verification, working with publishers, networks and agencies to: ensure that campaigns are running effectively, reduce discrepancies and make-goods, and provide scale solutions to identify and correct creative and campaign errors. The Media Trust supports traditional and mobile Internet advertising including display, rich-media, video, text and search and is integrated with leading ad serving and OMS solutions. Media Trust has over 400 clients including Adconion, AdMob, Admeld, AOL, AT&T Interactive, Creafi, Google, The Weather Channel and Yahoo.