Facebook, Twitter, Google, AOL and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have announced they would rally to keep Net surfers from ads that that dole out scams or malware. The new alliance would be named Ads Integrity Alliance.
The companies are set to announce Friday the formation of the Ads Integrity Alliance, which they say will be led by Maxim Weinstein, executive director of StopBadware, a nonprofit responsible for protecting consumers from virus-prone sites, or those that serve up spyware and other malware.
The new charter will have its members share information on scams and malware in advertising, as well as develop best practices and policy recommendations.
Weinstein said by having formal channels for sharing information on specific cyber threats, trends and bad ads, it could provide “a valuable weapon” in fighting scammers and other criminals as they move their campaigns through different sites on the Web.
Ad serving systems are designed to serve millions of targeted ads on the Web in a measurable way making it difficult to seize the bad ads before they hit the Net.
“When you have really large scale automated systems and you also have a criminal element that wants to take advantage of that to deliver malware and commit fraud you need to find ways to balance the need for efficiency and automation with the need to protect users from bad ads,” Weinstein said.
Weinstein said: “That has to include some combination of automation and human intervention.”
Eric Davis, global public policy manager at Google, told CNET News all complex ecosystems have parasites adding that no individual company or law enforcement agency can stop the bad ads from the Web singlehandedly.
“We think it’s important to work with other companies, other parties and organizations, to share the information we can,” Davis said.
Last year, Google disabled more than 130 million ads and 800,000 advertisers that violated policies on its sites and those of its partners’ sites, according to Davis’s post on the Google Official blog.
CNET News noted that major brands including Microsoft and Yahoo were absent from the group.
Weinstein however said he hopes the companies would join the group in future since the alliance seeks to expand its clout.
