IAS’s Response to the Adalytics Report

On February 7, Adalytics released a report that includes claims about Integral Ad Science. We take these claims seriously and are working to address the matter with the highest level of urgency. 

IAS has zero tolerance for any illegal activity, and we strongly condemn any conduct related to child sexual abuse material. We are reviewing the allegations and remain focused on ensuring media safety for all of our customers.

Actions We’re Taking:

Soon after learning of these claims, we began taking action to support our customers and ensure that we continue to do our part to foster a safe digital advertising ecosystem.

• We immediately labeled the domains listed in the report as ineligible for monetization due to the potential high-risk nature of their content as user-generated photo sharing sites.
• We promptly initiated a review of the sites in question and other similar domains, and we will take the learnings from this review into account as we re-assess our classifications for image-hosting sites on the open web and our practices for blocking and reporting sites that disseminate illegal content.
• We continue to invest heavily in our technology to further strengthen our inclusion and exclusion lists and our integrations with large media buying platforms so that we can cut these bad actors at the source.

An Overview of the Findings: 

IAS did not have the opportunity to review the full Adalytics report ahead of its publication, nor did we receive access to the underlying data prior to publication or have insight into how Adalytics analyzed individual campaign settings.

In several instances within the report, Adalytics acknowledges that they cannot determine if IAS tags were used for blocking or ad measurement. This is consistent with previous Adalytics reports that are unable to determine the way customers use our products and services, as well as the nuance of differing campaign settings that are available and selected by customers for measurement across the open web.

Over the past 60 days, our analysis concluded that 88,000 total webpages from these two domains were observed across all eligible ad opportunities. By contrast, we saw nearly 1.9 billion total webpages throughout the same time period.

Our Commitment to the Industry: 

Our continued focus is on delivering the industry’s most trusted and transparent measurement and optimization offerings. We partner with industry bodies and collaborate closely with our advertiser and publisher customers. The trust between IAS, our partners, our customers, and the industry is built on transparency and collaboration as we all navigate the constantly changing and fragmented digital advertising industry. 

We are committed to working in partnership with the industry and other companies to reduce the proliferation of bad actors while preserving the open internet.