The Trade Desk Partners with White Ops To Become First Advertising Platform to Block Fraudulent Impressions Before They Are Purchased

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 31, 2017 -- White Ops and The Trade Desk, Inc. (Nasdaq:TTD) today announce a landmark deal that completely changes how the advertising industry tackles fraud. White Ops’ Human Verification technology will aim to ensure that there is a human on the other end of every impression served on The Trade Desk that runs through White Ops, in real time, protecting global advertisers and agencies from buying fraudulent impressions.

“For too long, invalid traffic has been part of our industry,” said Jeff Green, CEO and co-founder of The Trade Desk. “There’s no level of fraud that is acceptable. Our partnership with White Ops means that we are the first advertising platform to block non-human impressions at the front door.”

“With this historic partnership, the industry is coming together to take a stand against ad fraud,” said Sandeep Swadia, CEO of White Ops. “White Ops is a cyber security firm at the vanguard of an ongoing arms race with cybercriminals. This is the first time that White Ops’ Human Verification technology is being used to prevent fraud across an entire buy-side platform. This is a game changer.”

“The world’s largest marketers and agencies have made clear that they want to clean up the advertising supply chain,” said Brian Stempeck, Chief Client Officer at The Trade Desk. “We think this initiative is the most powerful step yet to stop the problem at its source.”

As part of this initiative, White Ops and The Trade Desk will co-locate servers and data centers in North America, Europe and Asia, to scan every biddable ad impression in real-time. This practice is common with high frequency trading in the financial markets where every millisecond of efficiency counts. When a non-human impression, known as “Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT)” within the advertising industry, is identified by White Ops, The Trade Desk will block that impression from serving. The intent is this technology will be applied to every impression The Trade Desk bids on that runs through White Ops, on a global basis.   

Clients have had the ability to use pre-bid and post-bid technology from anti-fraud and brand safety companies on The Trade Desk platform for years. But too often, these technologies were not applied uniformly, and were only used on certain campaigns by clients. To date, the industry standard response has been to request credits from publishers and SSPs, or to create complex thresholds of acceptable fraud, rather than preventing the problem at the start.

Megan Pagliuca, Global CEO of Accuen, said, “This is a truly unique approach to fraud prevention that will make a significant impact for our brands. Unlike other solutions, the goal here is to run all impressions across The Trade Desk’s platform through White Ops, not just sampled impressions. Additionally, the Trade Desk has collaborated with the leading SSPs to bring a unified solution to market.”

As SIVT has grown in complexity, The Trade Desk, White Ops, and many other companies in the ad tech space have come to believe that a stronger response was needed from the entire industry.

“The Trade Desk and White Ops are two of Index’s important partners, and we believe this initiative will provide more transparency in programmatic buying,” said Will Doherty, VP of Business Development at Index Exchange. “Not only will this partnership be beneficial for advertisers and diminish buyer concerns surrounding fraudulent impressions, but it will serve as another step towards a fully trusted supply chain.”

About The Trade Desk, Inc.
The Trade Desk (Nasdaq:TTD) is a technology company that empowers buyers of advertising. Through its self-service, cloud-based platform, ad buyers can create, manage, and optimize more expressive data-driven digital advertising campaigns across ad formats, including display, video, audio, native and, social, on a multitude of devices, such as computers, mobile devices, and connected TV. Integrations with major data, inventory, and publisher partners ensure maximum reach and decisioning capabilities, and enterprise APIs enable custom development on top of the platform. Headquartered in Ventura, CA, The Trade Desk has offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia.

About White Ops
White Ops protects the Internet from automated threats: threats such as ad fraud and account takeovers conducted by malicious bots. The biggest and smartest Internet companies in the world rely on White Ops to detect and prevent automated threats that causes billions in damages annually. The company's Human Verification technology prevents automated threats by combating their root cause: the malicious software behind bots, ad fraud, and app fraud.  Even when bots use sophisticated techniques like exploiting real people’s devices, compromising human identity, or simulating human behavior, White Ops stops these bots with precision and reliability. To learn more, visit www.whiteops.com.

The Trade Desk Media Contact
Austin Rotter
5W Public Relations
[email protected]
646.862.6866

White Ops Media Contact
Ryan Wallace
PAN Communications
[email protected]
917.442.2305