Colossus SSP and Confiant Drive Unprecedented Safety and Ad Quality with Industry-Leading Partnership

Partnership Reduces Malicious Ads and Enhances Security, Improving Ad Quality for Publishers and Advertisers Across the Digital Ecosystem

HOUSTON, Oct. 8, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Colossus Media LLC ("Colossus SSP"), a subsidiary of the only Black-owned publicly traded advertising technology company, Direct Digital Holdings (DDH), announced today it has partnered with Confiant, a leader in cybersecurity for digital advertising, to combat criminal activity online and malicious advertising. This collaboration aims to safeguard publishers, advertisers and consumers by integrating Confiant's advanced cybersecurity technology with the Colossus SSP platform.

The digital advertising landscape faces ongoing challenges from "malvertising," a serious threat that encompasses various malicious activities from forced redirects to ransomware. Recent industry data highlights the severity of this issue, with 1 in every 79 ad impressions revealing significant security or quality issues, and U.S. consumers losing more than $12.5 billion to malicious ads in the past year. Recognizing these growing risks, Colossus SSP has taken a proactive approach to protect its network of over 21,000 publishers and the billions of impressions it serves monthly.

"Protecting users from online threats and malvertising is a critical priority. Thanks to our partnership with Confiant, we can offer publishers a safer platform for monetizing their inventory, while ensuring that advertisers reach real people in brand-safe environments," said Lashawnda Goffin, Chief Executive Officer of Colossus SSP.

Colossus SSP's new partnership addresses the industry's security challenges by leveraging Confiant's cutting-edge platform to monitor and block potentially malicious ads, complementing the company's already rigorous quality control measures. This technique targets both security violations involving malicious code and quality violations such as misleading ads that lure users into scams. By enhancing overall security measures, the partnership delivers a safer, more trustworthy experience for users while ensuring advertisers' campaigns are displayed in brand-safe environments.

The partnership between Colossus SSP and Confiant has already demonstrated impressive results. Security violations have been reduced from the industry average of 0.19% to less than 0.002%, while ad quality violations have dropped from 1.57% to 0.08%. This represents a nearly 95% reduction across both issues. As a result, ads served through Colossus SSP are now 20x safer compared to industry norms. These outcomes underscore Colossus SSP's commitment to protecting the digital advertising ecosystem.

By providing a more secure environment for both consumers and advertisers, Colossus SSP and Confiant are working to improve user safety, enhance ad quality and implement robust security measures across the digital advertising landscape. This partnership reinforces Colossus SSP's ongoing efforts to create a safer and more trustworthy digital advertising experience for all stakeholders. Advertisers can access Colossus SSP's inventory directly or through leading DSPs, including Yahoo DSP, Microsoft Invest, and Zeta Global.

To read the case study. https://hubs.ly/Q02S3kRn0.

About Colossus SSP

Colossus SSP (Nasdaq: DRCT) owns and operates Colossus SSP, Huddled Masses, and Orange142. The company offers a unified platform that serves various clients across various sectors, managing over 326 billion monthly impressions. Colossus SSP is committed to providing innovative, data-driven advertising solutions prioritizing ROI, DEI, and sustainability.

About Direct Digital Holdings

Direct Digital Holdings (Nasdaq: DRCT), owner of operating companies Colossus SSP, Huddled Masses, and Orange 142, brings state-of-the-art sell- and buy-side advertising platforms together under one umbrella company. Direct Digital Holdings' sell-side platform, Colossus SSP, offers advertisers of all sizes extensive reach within general market and multicultural media properties. The Company's subsidiaries Huddled Masses and Orange 142 deliver significant ROI for middle market advertisers by providing data-optimized programmatic solutions at scale for businesses in sectors that range from energy to healthcare to travel to financial services. Direct Digital Holdings' sell- and buy-side solutions generate billions of impressions per month across display, CTV, in-app and other media channels.

About Confiant

Confiant is the cybersecurity leader in detecting and stopping Malvertising attacks. Having built hundreds of integrations directly into the web's ad tech infrastructure, Confiant has unparalleled visibility to the malware, scams, and fraud serving through ads today. Leveraging our security expertise, we deliver complete control over ads to publishers and ad platforms, also remediating quality issues, privacy violations, and mis-categorized ads. In publishing the industry's leading ad quality benchmark report and mapping the threat actors that use ads-as-an-attack-vector at Matrix.Confiant.com, Confiant is leading the charge in protecting users from criminals hijacking the ad tech supply chain. Trusted by customers like Microsoft, Paramount, and Magnite, we celebrate our 10th anniversary this year.

SOURCE Direct Digital Holdings