EQUATIV OUTSMARTS THE COMPETITION

Overview

Equativ (previously Smart Ad Server) and Confiant became partners in April 2016, driven by a shared concern around the growing ad security and quality issues emerging throughout the industry. It was no longer possible to operate without real-time 24/7 systems and technology to safeguard the quality of creatives served onto Equativ’s Marketplace. The initial scope and return on investment of the partnership was strengthened with the addition of an RTB integration in September 2017. At that point, Equativ could state that Confiant’s support was a “no-brainer” and already ROI positive. Ongoing operations associated with this partnership led us to a very solid security level of more than 95% ad revenue generated and realized without any security issues. Further strengthening into continuous improvement processes led Equativ to reach a world-class 99.9% of ad-secure revenue, almost eradicating security threats on Equativ’s marketplace.

CHALLENGE

In the spring of 2016 the entire adtech industry, including Equativ, saw a steep rise in “bad ads’’ of questionable quality and even more questionable security. Equativ recognized that this situation was no longer manageable with the systems and technology in place at that time and that they would have to put significant assets in place to address the security risks posed by malvertising at scale. Equativ also realized the risks created by large-scale growth of IVT (invalid traffic) in the US and EU, arising from the inherent lack of control over Supply and Demand induced by complex programmatic value paths. Dealing with it was workload intensive without a real-time 24/7 technology solution in place. Even with a tech solution, new processes around ad security and quality needed to be implemented because, as the team discovered, without the processes, an open connection to the “bad actors’’ remained.

In addition to hiring team members, Equativ determined they would need to create a new process around quality for creatives, purge bad connections, and secure a technology solution that could pinpoint and identify quality issues and threats in real-time.

SOLUTION

After reviewing a few options, the Equativ team landed on Confiant. At the time, the real-time curation of bids and creatives by Confiant’s security team was developing tools to handle very sophisticated fraud schemes as they initially appeared (e.g. high-pace-rotating creatives, campaigns and demand paths from large-scale offenders, highly sophisticated scanner evasion fraud schemes combining custom targeting, advanced environment detection, cloaking techniques and creative “flipping”). As time progressed the Confiant Security team added this functionality. The Confiant Security team has done a very good job in detecting, investigating, and addressing these schemes quickly, and then shutting them down.

After implementing Confiant’s solution, Equativ was efficiently reaching more than a 95% security level, in a financially and operationally efficient manner. But, occasionally occurring fraud schemes were still preventing reaching the 100% level of “exquisite delight” as phrased by the Equativ team. This “utopia” Equativ says, would be “For premium Publishers that would allow Equativ to one, reduce executive complaints from Publishers and two, develop more advanced partnership discussions with our marketplace partners, on both the Supply and Demand side.” Thus, allowing Equativ to generate more revenue while protecting existing revenue.

RESULTS

Implementing an anti-malvertising and ad quality solution was easy, but changing the internal processes and team was a different story. Making sweeping changes has not been easy, and has taken multiple iterations to get the thresholds and CTM processes (Customer Threat Management) right. Overall, it takes time for warnings and threats to drive behavioral change among partners and buyers.