By Rocky Moss
When a buyer evaluates app inventory, the store age rating is one of the first signals they lean on. It’s easy to read, it’s present on every listing, and for most of the catalog it’s a reasonable proxy: a Mature 17+ rating tells you to look closer, an Everyone rating tells you to relax. We … Continued
By Rocky Moss
Buyers often assume that listings in app stores provide the same transparency as web domains. On the web, verification infrastructure is visible and standardized: domains expose ownership signals, developer identity can be traced through metadata, and authorization files make it possible to confirm who is allowed to sell inventory. Across six platforms where CTV and … Continued
By Rocky Moss
In this week’s newsletter, we look at how AI-generated health content is slipping past brand safety checks and what that means for advertisers buying in high-trust environments.
By Rocky Moss
Over the past year, the economics of open-web publishing have undergone a seismic shift. This is largely thanks to generative AI, which, by reducing the cost of content creation to near zero, has made it possible to launch and monetize sites at scale and a pace previously difficult to imagine. In search of a better … Continued
By Rocky Moss
Why every metric eventually breaks down Every advertiser has a favorite signal. For example, viewability, attention, fraud scores, and “premium” lists all promise clarity in a system built on uncertainty. But none tell the full story. For years, these inferred metrics have served as stand-ins for quality. Viewability tells buyers that an ad appeared on-screen, … Continued
By Rocky Moss
Why advertisers are paying for video that no one watches Digital advertising depends on trust. Yet in video, that trust is breaking down. Many advertisers assume their ads appear inside engaging content experiences when in truth, much of what gets sold as “instream” is anything but. Too often, these “placements” are muted autoplay boxes buried … Continued
If you’ve ever browsed the web and landed on a site that felt suspiciously vague, repetitive, or just plain low-quality, you’ve probably encountered what’s known as a ‘slop‘ site. Once the domain of content farms, these low-quality websites are now being mass-produced by generative AI at unprecedented speed. While they may look harmless at first … Continued
stg-deepsee-dev.kinsta.cloud updates MFA criteria to better flag ad-heavy, low-quality sites, ensuring transparency and quality in programmatic advertising. Learn more about our new standards.
By Rocky Moss
It’s been a little over a month since we released our new research portal, and the reception has been both encouraging, and educational! We’ve brought in clients across all our usage tiers, and they come from all parts of the supply chain. Through conversations with those clients, we’re constantly honing in on where the product … Continued
By Rocky Moss
This investigation was a joint effort between Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence’s Jérôme Segura, DeepSee’s Rocky Moss and Antonio Torres. Key findings Introduction Online video streaming sites have always been some of the most visited destinations on the web. Legitimate ones will typically require a subscription fee or rely on advertising as part of their business model. … Continued