Top 5 Re-establishes Trust With Visitors After Malvertising Hijacked User Experiences
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Top 5 is a leading review site. As a large digital publisher, the company provides consumer insights in the form of slideshows, comparisons and ratings, and site traffic is monetized through the use of digital ads. The company’s revenue is directly connected to traffic volume and visitor behavior on the site.
Length of stay, low bounce rates and traffic to affiliate links are all vital to Top 5’s continued growth, and these metrics were being hijacked by malvertising. While they were quickly detected, the attacks nevertheless did immediate damage to the company’s revenue and reputation.
Implementing cleanAD provided Top 5 with ad redirect protection that stabilized the site and re-established trust with visitors.
Read on to learn how cleanAD immediately put a stop to malvertising and ad redirects.
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Challenges
What tipped Top 5 off to its malvertising problem were troubling numbers for many key metrics. Unexpected revenue and traffic slumps were connected not only to a specific date and time, but to specific positions within the site. When no technical issues or malware could be found, it became apparent these issues were caused by intrusive ads that were redirecting users.
Solution
Top5 implemented cleanAD, which uses behavioral analysis to eliminate malicious ad redirects while ensuring publishers still retain ad revenue. Unlike traditional malvertising solutions, instead of trying to prevent or intercept bad ads before bad actors pay for their ad impressions, cleanAD stops third party code on the client side and in real time.
Results
Top 5 deployed cleanAD quickly and easily with the addition of a simple line of javascript on its site. Once up and running, cleanAD immediately put a stop to malvertising and ad redirects. Now, the team at Top 5 doesn’t give a second thought to malvertising and it has virtually become a non-issue for their site.
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The Result
With cleanAD, Top 5 no longer has to worry about malvertising. If user comments or complaints ever arise, the Top 5 team will check the dashboard retroactively to see if disruptions had occurred, but the system doesn’t require any regular monitoring.
Instead, cleanAD prevents malvertising in real time, shoring up site security and protecting the user experience. “I know that bad actors are always trying to find and exploit: they try to find a permission on a file that we forgot, find a login where somebody didn’t pick a good password. Things that I can’t always be personally responsible for but that are exploits that I will be held responsible for when the site stops earning or stops producing.
We’re gonna get hacked. The question is, what are the different layers we can put in place to make it as difficult, unwieldy and unfriendly to hack? It’s the citadel approach. We put as many hills and valleys as possible between hackers and the target.
cleanAD: Ad Redirect Protection
cleanAD provides ad redirect protection for digital publishers like Top 5, and is capable of handling sites on a large scale. Ad redirects take users away from a site and consistently undercut publisher profit. This is an imminent threat for most publishers of this scale, and solving it requires an effective tool that doesn’t need constant monitoring.
cleanAD provides just that.
Don’t take that chance. When malvertising is hijacking your platform, cleanAD helps you take back control. Contact clean.io to get your own free trial and see the difference cleanAD can make.
