“Boltive signifies an expansion of our services so clients can avoid malware, offensive content, heavy ads and now privacy-violating ads,” said Boltive CEO Dan Frechtling, who joined the company in May 2021. ”As users request blocking of more forms of malicious and offensive ads, our Ad Lightning software now protects 100 billion impressions per month. As digital companies face greater data protection obligations in 2022 and 2023, Privacy Guard helps resolve trade-offs between user addressability and user privacy.” 

Boltive will continue to enhance its flagship Ad Lightning product and apply its patented technology to help  brands, publishers and platforms navigate challenges around ad quality, privacy, consent, and effectiveness of third party identity solutions. 

Individuals and governments have become less tolerant of invasive media--ads that are malicious, offensive, and prying. We’ve documented a 17% quarter-over-quarter increase in unique threats from bad actors. The scope of ad safety and quality continues to broaden as certain advertisers push limits around unsavory and shady images and messaging. With Ad Lightning software, publishers are able to take back control of their site experiences and protect visitors. 

Prying ads that skim personal data are also of chief concern. According to an August KPMG survey, 86% of consumers feel a growing concern about data privacy--with more concerned about their data being sold than hacked. Further, 62% of business leaders say their companies should do more to protect customer data, and 29% say their companies sometimes use unethical means to collect private data. 

Gartner estimates 75% of the world's population will be under privacy regulations  in 2023. The IAPP is tracking 31 US state privacy laws and bills, and 94% require opt-out or opt-in rights to use of personal information. 

These shifts in Web regulations coincide with shifts in technologies. The deprecation of third party cookies that began with Safari and will culminate with Chrome in 2023 will scramble the Web’s advertising architecture--with privacy and addressability implications. 

As both legal and technical Web standards change, brands, platforms and publishers will be more accountable for consumer protection. Privacy Guard builds on Ad Lightning’s patented synthetic audience technology to help companies determine if their websites and ads respect data sharing requirements. Boltive teamed up with the co-author of CCPA and CPRA and consulted with top legal experts to develop the software. Imagine a financial audit, but for data sharing compliance.

“With Privacy Guard, Boltive enables visibility that was never before possible into data sharing violations,” said Rick Arney, co-author of CPRA and CCPA. “This capability supports adherence to data privacy principles embedded in CPRA, CCPA, and other global regulations covering personal information.” 

Currently in Beta testing, Privacy Guard’s is already showing:

·  For brands. 17% of network requests have consent failures, meaning partners aren’t honoring consent strings from Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) and consumers may be tracked and followed by ads they attempt to avoid.

·  For publishers, 18% of consent strings are being misread, resulting in lost revenue for highly valuable audience members

·  Overall: 53 programmatic advertising partners aren’t properly passing consent at any given time

Boltive is now offering free scans to qualified brands and publishers through early access so they can confirm they comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the upcoming California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA). Privacy Guard will automatically check for failed privacy consent, unlawful data sharing and unauthorized data collectors. It runs independently, requiring no integration or installation. 

About Boltive

Boltive secures brands, publishers and platforms against invasive media through two products, Ad Lightning and Privacy Guard. Since 2016 the company has safeguarded audiences from malicious, offensive and now privacy-violating ads. Boltive works with many of the top 100 Comscore publishers and now protects over 100 billion impressions globally per month.  Boltive regularly earns a Net Promoter Score (NPS) in the top 1% of software companies with the digital media industry’s most comprehensive ad intelligence platform.  In a media environment characterized by new regulations and cookieless technologies, Boltive products bring transparency and control to ad quality and privacy.

For media inquiries, contact:

Robin Chwatko for Boltive: robin@rg-pr.com/646.729.7994

SEATTLE (PRWEB) MAY 03, 2021

Ad Lightning, the ad intelligence firm that offers the industry's most comprehensive ad quality solution, today announced the appointment of a new CEO, Dan Frechtling, during a period of high growth for the company as well as its expansion into privacy regulation compliance.

Ad Lightning’s current CEO and co-founder, Scott Moore, is stepping down for personal reasons but will remain with the company overseeing business development and strategy as well as on the board of directors. Scott founded Ad Lightning in 2016 along with co-founders Kate Reinmiller, Chief Revenue Officer and Drake Callahan, Chief Technology Officer. Together they grew the company into a leader in digital ad quality SaaS with over 80 customers on four continents and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 86 —which is nearly 3X the average for SaaS companies, according to Retently, and in the top 1% for software companies, according to Qualtrics.

Dan brings a wealth of experience leading teams in the brand safety, cyber security and compliance space which makes him uniquely qualified to support the growth of Ad Lightning’s ad quality business as well as initiatives that leverage its core technology and IP into new data privacy and audit solutions. The aim is to help companies navigate the growing number of privacy regulations such as the EU's GDPR, California's CCPA and CPRA, Virginia's VCDPA, Brazil's LGPD, and other similar laws around the US and the world.

By 2023, 65% of the world’s population will have its personal information covered by privacy regulations, up from 10% today, according to Gartner Research.

“I’m delighted that Dan is taking the reins as CEO of Ad Lightning, a company I’ve been proud to help build from the ground floor to become the industry’s most comprehensive ad quality tool,” said Scott Moore. “Dan is an exceptional leader and has a long history of scaling and selling significant digital businesses and building highly successful global sales, marketing and risk management teams. As we expand into new markets, such as data privacy, I’m confident that Dan will set the right course for the company.”

Most recently, Dan served as President of G2 Web Services, a Verisk business. G2’s cybersecurity software identifies bad actors for payments and digital commerce firms. He extended G2’s merchant risk solutions into detection of prohibited content and transaction laundering.

Previously, he held Vice President roles at hibu, a spinout from British Telecom, DS-IQ, technology provider to the Walmart Smart Network, and Stamps.com, which launched the first server-based web postage technology. Prior to that, Dan led client engagements at McKinsey & Company.

He earned his MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School, his BS with High Honors from Northwestern University, and studied at Nankai University in Tianjin, China.

About Ad Lightning
Ad Lightning is the digital media industry’s most comprehensive ad intelligence platform, focused on bringing transparency and control to a chaotic programmatic world by helping publishers, SSPs, DSPs and native platforms manage their ad quality more effectively. Ad Lightning's patented technologies protect our clients’ brands and user experiences by identifing and blocking malicious, non-compliant and unwanted ads.

The company is based in Seattle and is backed by Pioneer Square Labs, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Flying Fish Partners. More information about the company is available at adlightning.com or by following @AdLightningTech on Twitter or on LinkedIn.

Media contact:
Jenny Mulholland
jennymulholland39@gmail.com
732-245-0021

P1 integrates Ad Lightning solution on YIELDONE to scan and block malicious ads to ensure that the creatives offered on the publisher’s site are compliant and secure. In addition, through this alliance, P1 will provide Ad Lightning solutions to publishers, to protect internet users from malicious ads, redirect ads, and ads that do not comply with the publisher’s site by blocking on the client-side.

Scott Moore, CEO of Ad Lighting

We are thrilled to be partnering with Platform One and expanding our ad quality solution to the Japanese Market.  Now, more than ever, Platforms are playing a critical role in ensuring a more safe, reliable, and transparent ad ecosystem, and we are looking forward to working with companies like Platform One that value this mission. 

Naoki Toyofuku, President of Platform One 

It is a great pleasure for us to partner with Ad Lightning. By partnering with them, our SSP YIELDONE demand will be more secure for publisher customers. It will be a tough time for the programmatic industry in the coming months as we enter the ID-less world. We will provide the Ad Lightning solution to protect publisher customers from such changes.

About the Companies

Platform One Inc.

President: Naoki Toyofuku

Address: YGP Tower 33F, 4-20-3 Ebisu Shibuya-ku Tokyo Japan

Established: Feb 2011

URL: http://www.platform-one.co.jp

Ad Lightning

CEO:  Scott Moore

Seattle, WA

adlightning.com

“We all know that digital ads can be Trojan horses, concealing numerous calls and responses from multiple data collectors each time they are loaded. This process can easily lead to unapproved collection and data leakage which GDPR was designed to eliminate,” said Scott Moore, CEO, Ad Lightning. “Ad Lightning’s new features give publishers and ad exchanges better optics into data collection and allow them to eliminate unsanctioned third parties.”
 

The sample log below represents the newest data security feature of Ad Lightning’s Insights Dashboard — i.e. information about which ad exchange or network is allowing which data collectors to draw from a publisher’s digital ad inventory. This information can be shared with the ad exchanges to determine which data collectors have contractual permission to be in the mix. Traffic can also be filtered by geography to break out the information by all of the European Union —home of GDPR— as well as by individual country.

Another significant new feature in Ad Lightning’s ad quality solution is the ability to place data collectors on an approved or unapproved list, a preventative measure which should reduce the need to extensively analyze the ad logs and a valuable tool for combatting unauthorized data collection.

About Ad Lightning

Ad Lightning is the digital media industry’s most comprehensive ad intelligence platform, focused on bringing transparency and control to a chaotic programmatic world by helping publishers and exchanges manage their ad quality more effectively. Ad Lightning’s live site scanning uses patent-pending technology that builds synthetic audiences and sends them to sites to mimic human behavior, capturing data on the quality of ads, highlighting the source of bad ones and proactively blocking malware and other types of unwanted ad units. Its Insights Dashboard includes valuable data and trend analytics, including a network health score, customized ad thresholds, Individual ad scores, partner trending, fraud analysis, log-level issue resolution and more.  More information about the company is available at adlightning.com or by following @AdLightningTech on Twitter or on LinkedIn.

For media inquiries, contact:

Jenny Mulholland

for Ad Lightning

jennymulholland39@gmail.com

732-245-0021

Seattle, WA, June 4, 2018 — Ad Lightning, whose ad intelligence platform helps digital publishers and ad exchanges manage programmatic advertising and boost ROI, has released an upgrade, which includes new ad blocking tools that give clients a significant new level of control over ad quality, as well as enhanced business-building insights. With these new capabilities, including an Ad Blocking Wrapper and Pre-bid Plug In, Ad Lightning now offers the industry’s most comprehensive set of solutions to help publishers and ad exchanges manage programmatic advertising by preventing potentially malicious, offensive or non-compliant ad units from loading on a publisher’s site.

“We provide an ad intelligence platform that’s bringing transparency and control to a chaotic programmatic world.  Our blue chip publisher clients’ have depended on our proven methodology to detect bad ads, but they were also demanding tools to block them, so we answered the call,” said Ad Lightning CEO Scott Moore. “Ad Lightning is now a one-stop platform which helps our publisher partners identify, block and report bad ads. Ad Lightning’s new tools give publishers additional air cover with stronger protections against a broader range of advertising threats across more browsers. We’ve taken the industry’s most precise ad scanning technology and bolstered it with the industry’s most effective ad blocking solution. The new Ad Lightning Blocking Wrapper stops bad ads from loading. In addition, our new Prebid plug-in delivers even greater ROI-boosting intelligence.”

“We initially came to Ad Lightning for their live scanning and data tools, but our real pain point was blocking malware and redirects. Their new ad blocker is solving that problem for us, said Marie Kiekhaefer, Product Manager, Sporcle.  “The Ad Lightning team is incredibly responsive. They incorporated our feedback to make the new ad blocker work for our set-up. Their team really seeks to understand and address our company needs.  

In Ad Lightning’s recent survey of 100+ Ad Operations professionals, the vast majority of respondents — 73% — cited effective publisher-side ad blocking as their most critical need. An additional Ad Lightning study indicated that nearly a third —28% of all Internet ads — are ‘bad ads,’ meaning they are oversized, malicious, offensive or non-compliant.  The full survey is available here.

How Ad Lightning Works:

Ad Lightning’s patent-pending technology helps publishers and exchanges take control of their programmatic advertising via proactive bad ad protection, live site scanning and ad network insights.  Ad Lightning identifies the source of bad ads, helping publishers course-correct, block and manage partner relationships in real-time. Built-in data analytics provide access to trend analysis and deeper insight into overall traffic quality helping to protect client's reputations & the experience of their users.  In addition, ad exchanges and sell side platforms use Ad Lightning’s scanning technology to help ensure that creative meets guidelines for compliance, content and security before going live.

Upgraded Features:

Ad Lightning’s new Blocking Wrapper integrates with existing tech stacks to watch every impression and block ads that don't meet each publisher’s specific standards.  The Blocking Wrapper detects problematic behaviors, domains and signatures and prevents unwanted creative before it renders on a page. The Blocking Wrapper and a new Prebid Plug-in also analyze creative attributes, giving publishers a real-time view of their ad delivery flow, compliance violations and overall health of their inventory partners.  

Additionally, Ad Lightning’s upgrade includes enhanced data capabilities which offer digital publishers and exchange clients best in class analysis tools to identify trends, detect malicious behavior and provide log-level issue resolution.

The enhanced Ad Lightning platform is available to publishers and ad exchanges for a free 30-day trial by contacting info@adlightning.com.  More information on the upgraded version of Ad Lightning is available at https://www.adlightning.com/product.

# # #

About Ad Lightning

Ad Lightning is the digital media industry’s most comprehensive ad intelligence platform focused on bringing transparency and control to a chaotic programmatic world by helping publishers and exchanges manage their ad quality more effectively.  Ad Lightning’s live site scanning uses patent-pending technology that builds synthetic audiences and sends them to sites to mimic human behavior, capturing data on the quality of ads, highlighting the source of bad ones and proactively blocking malware and other types of unwanted ad units.  Its Insights Dashboard includes valuable data and trend analytics, including a network health score, customized ad thresholds, Individual ad scores, partner trending, fraud analysis, log-level issue resolution and more. More information about the company is available at adlightning.com or by following @AdLightningTech on Twitter or on LinkedIn.

For media inquiries, contact:

Jeanne Meyer for Ad Lightning, 917.816.5773, jeannepmeyer@gmail.com, @jeannepmeyer