White Bullet’s mission is to demonetise online piracy. We set up White Bullet with a vision to provide more transparency to advertisers around online intellectual property infringement: for them to find out when and how their ads appear on high risk infringing publishers, and to make it easier for their ad partners to filter out pirate publishers with dynamic feeds of pirate websites.
An easy to integrate AI-driven technological solution, to remove any sense of confusion that may arise from static inaccurate lists. Not only does this support the industry’s moral duty to stop ad revenue to criminals but directly help brands achieve campaign safety and provides stronger opportunities to improve ROI by accessing legitimate paying audiences.
However, it is harder to fix this problem of ad funded piracy when brands and their advertising companies refuse to adopt effective measures and continue to misplace ads. In many cases ad placement partners state their clients – the brands – don’t acknowledge the problem of piracy as serious enough to merit action.
White Bullet, along with regulators like TAG, continues to reach out to brands and agencies to raise awareness when brands’ ads appear on pirate publishers. Systematic outreach has been ongoing through 2019 and stepped up in Q1 2020 with more direct outreach by enforcement agencies like the UK IP Office.
When brands are aware of the problem and consequences it is more likely they will take responsibility and demand their ad partners take long-overdue action for their business safety, as well as that of their consumers. Naturally, most brands are concerned when they first hear their online ads fund piracy and seek further evidence, but despite this many don’t take steps to resolve the problem. Significantly, despite outreach over several months, branded ads on pirate websites remains as high as before outreach began in 2019 – representing around 40% of all advertising on the top pirate publishers globally.
Worryingly, 57% of premium brands contacted in Q1 2020 continue to fund piracy despite being given clear evidence of misplacement. Of those, 7% refused to engage at all, saying they had more important matters to deal with than piracy – and many of these are the top supporters of pirate websites by ad volume.
Only 3% of premium brands contacted positively engaged and took various forms of action, with no further ads placed on pirate publishers.
These percentages must be turned around to stop piracy and protect brands.
With the current pandemic, businesses do have other issues to manage, but putting brand reputation at risk during a crisis when consumers are looking for leadership, seems to make no sense. When marketing budgets are being slashed across the board, stopping precious ad budget going to criminals should also be a priority for advertisers’ CFOs. The suitability of a webpage is key to advertising ROI and of course brand safety, but when a website is infringing the law, none of its webpages should ever be deemed suitable.
3 practical steps that brands can take to protect themselves and stop funding piracy:
- Check where your ads are going - seek full ad placement auditing data including on your ad partners own partners.
- Ensure your ad partners filter out pirate websites - demand up to date dynamic pirate list feeds.
- Monitor your ad partners remain compliant - protect your brand at all stages and across all digital ad campaigns
For help with the above data or to check if your brand is impacted, contact us here.
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White Bullet has helped over 3,000 brands to avoid funding digital piracy.
With over a billion dollars of ad spend funding IP infringement in 2020, it's time to work with us to stop pirates from using advertising to profit from distributing intellectual property.
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