Find out key Malvertising activity increases and ad violation category insights in this edition of AdSecure’s Violations report Q3 2024. We will analyze our data extracted from nearly 40K scans run throughout the quarter to bring you useful insights on what to keep an eye for in order to flag and block online threats and attacks attempts on your ad supply chain or website. Keep reading to find out how to protect end user experience from bad ad quality and security threats!
"In Q3 1 in every 20 scans detected 4 or more violations in the ad supply chain"
In Q3 1 in every 20 scans detected 4 or more violations. This is twice as much as in Q2, with 1 in every 40! Also, 3 or more violations have been detected in 1 of every 10 scans in Q3, which is again twice as much as in Q2, with 3 violations having been detected in 1 of 20 scans. Here’s the breakdown comparing both quarters:
This serves as proof of Malvertisers ramping up their malicious tactics, adding more than 1 violation per ad supply chain to confuse the Ad Network, and ensure that even if one of their attacks gets detected, there will be at least a couple more that will make it through the scans.
Luckily, if you are wondering, how to protect end user experience from bad ads, AdSecure provides Active Real-Time Monitoring tools set to detect even the stealthier attack, avoiding it sliding through the cracks and making it to the end user’s screen.
How to protect end user experience from bad ad quality and security threats in Q3 2024
As we will see below in bold, in Q3 2024, online threats that impaired user experience dominated the scene, with 4 violations from the User Experience and 2 from the IAB Standards category making it to the top 10 ad violation ranking of Q3 2024. This once again highlights how important it is to protect end user experience from bad ad quality and security threats. Here are the top 10 digital advertising threats that damaged User Experience in Q3 2024:
Ssl-non-compliant (User Security) 19.2%
Malicious-url-virustotal (User Security) 18.6%
Landing-page-error (User Experience) 12.1%
Suspicious-tld (User Advisory) 11.1%
Back-button-hijack (User Experience) 10.9%
Threat-intelligence (User Advisory) 9.9%
*Javascript-dialog-on-entry (User Experience) 7.5%*
Iab-ad-dimensions (IAB Standards) 6.3%
Permission-notification (User Experience) 3.1%
Iab-ad-compression (IAB Standards) 1.3%
Malvertising Insight: A great user experience is key for the success of online businesses, making it extremely important to find out how to protect end user experience from bad ad quality and security threats: If the end user finds the navigation experience annoying or difficult, they will simply click off and find another website that better suits their needs. It is also very likely that the bad luck doesn’t stop there! According to Ecommerce Bonsai’s study, 46.7% of end users that had a negative user experience (opens in a new tab) this year expressed that they told their friends about their bad experience. This could put your business in a very bad position. Plus, Google can severely penalize a poor or even dangerous user experience, affecting website rankings and making it disappear from the search results. So, how to stop Google from ranking my website down? Keep reading to find out.
Digital advertising threats that damaged user experience in Q3 2024 in English speaking GEOs
Below you can find the top 6 English speaking countries that experienced more cyber attacks in Q3 2024, with US on top, followed by the UK
Detect multiple corrupted ads in an ad supply chain on these 10 devices and browsers
if you are trying to find a way to detect multiple corrupted ads in your ad supply chain, you should definitely look at what devices are being targeted. Here are the top 10 devices where online attacks have been registered this part quarter, 4 of them Apple products, 3 Windows, 4 of them Android. When it comes to the user browsers being used when most of the attacks happened, 4 of the device types used Chrome, 4, Safari, 1, Firefox, and 1, Internet Explorer:
What malvertising tactics increased in Q3 2024?** **Digital advertising threats that damaged User Experience in Q3 2024
In this section we will take a look at the digital advertising threats that damaged User Experience in Q3 2024 and we will look at which malvertising tactics increased in Q3 2024". We will also learn which ad quality violations to look out for in order to find out how to protect end user experience from bad ad quality and security threats:
Phishing-url-webrisk, +150.80%: This is a big one if what you are wondering is how to protect end User Experience from bad ads. A Phishing landing page or site poses as a trusted organization, such as a bank, government site, browser or program download site, with the aim of scamming the end user into giving personal or sensitive information. This can of course be very dangerous for the end user.
Malicious-url-webrisk, +121.60%: End users are tricked into clicking these malicious links and directed to bogus websites riddled with unsolicited content such as malicious software, viruses, or other dangerous or non-compliant items.
Cryptocurrency-miner, +123.10%: Cyber criminals use the end user’s device CPU power to mine for crypto currencies without their consent. Some legitimate websites are transparent about using the end user’s computing power to mine as an exchange for free content. This is not the case with this violation, since the end user can stay unaware of their devices being hijacked for a long time.
Iab-ad-dimensions, +80.30% and Iab-ad-compression, 48.10%: We will explain these 2 IAB Standards Violations in the section below.
Multiple-pop-ups, +18.80%: Pop ads are frequently used by malicious Advertisers, making them automatically trigger and download malicious software without requiring any interaction. With the Multiple pop-ups violation, several malicious message windows pop on the end user’s screen, riddled with dangerous or non-compliant content ready to infect their device.
Permission-notification, +12.80%: A permission request notification is sent to the end user to access their camera, microphone, geolocation, and other apps. This is once again entirely different from the access requests sent by recently downloaded apps as these malicious notifications appear seemingly out of nowhere. If the end user accepts, they could end up having their live location, bank, or other information illegitimately used.
Unsafe-content-adult, +10.20%: This violation can be very damaging to a Publisher’s Brand, as well as for the end user. It exposes website audiences to unrequested sexual or pornographic images and content that could be very damaging to younger or sensitive end users.
Auto-redirect-app-market, +9.60%: A script causes a website page to break out of any frames “framing” it, resulting in automatically redirecting to an App Store, generally riddled with unwanted, non-compliant and sometimes dangerous apps ready to steal end user information or infecting their device.
Pop-up, +5.70%: Non-compliant Pop-ups and Tabunders are automatically triggered without user interaction. These malicious ads can be very annoying and sometimes dangerous depending on the embedded content, also posing a very real threat to the Publisher’s brand.
IAB Standards Violations on Q3 2024
The IAB Standards are a set of guidelines established to ensure quality in online advertising. They cover aspects in the ad resource chain like dimensions, weight, and resolution, and are set to guarantee the best possible navigation experience for the end user. Continuing on are the IAB Ad Violation percentages for Q3 2024:
Iab-ad-dimensions, 80.2%: The IAB recommends ad dimensions ranging between 100x200 - 150x300. This detection will flag ads that are not compliant with these dimensions.
Iab-ad-compression 16.9%: To optimize the file size for delivery of an ad to a browser, the ad’s assets should be delivered in compressed formats, like gzip. This detection flags ads that do not comply with the IAB standards’s compression rules.
Iab-ad-weight, 2.4%: This detection flags ads that are not compliant with the IAB standards sizes and weight, and thus don’t perform correctly.
Iab-ad-request-count 0.6%: The number of requests made to fetch ad resources has a significant impact on the load performance of both ad and website where it is displayed. The IAB recommends a maximum of 10 requests, and this detection will flag further requests.
At this point you are probably already wondering, “ok, so where do I find quality software to protect my online brand from User Experience violations?”. We address this question in the next section:
Conclusion: Find software to protect my online brand from User Experience violations
Most reliable Ad Networks will have some form of ad security check pre-launch, whether it is a solvent Compliance team, or security software. However, it is important to remember that a lot of Malvertisers swap around legitimate links with malicious ones after post-launch, therefore circumventing any preemptive scanning and flagging attempts. No Ad Network is ever entirely safe from such tactics, with Advertising giants like Google proving to be vulnerable to cloaking or link swapping tactics on several occasions throughout the past years.
Ironically, Google also penalizes websites which show non-compliant and dangerous ad content thus impairing user experience, easily ending up in Publishers having their websites blocked or penalized, heavily impacting their revenues and website metrics. So, if you are asking yourself “how to stop Google from ranking my website down?”, this is why it is important to invest not only in an in-house Compliance team, but also in a pre and post launch real-time automated Malvertising prevention solution that continuously runs in the background keeping your ad supply chain at all times.
Get in touch with our team to find out more about how to protect end user experience from bad ad quality and security threats and start protecting your ad supply chain and end users now with our free trial! (opens in a new tab)
