CANADA – With big database breaches becoming almost the norm instead of the exception, Secure Socket Layer technology, or SSL, is no longer a luxury. In fact, Google now gives a ranking boost to websites that employ the security measure.

JuicyAds is on top of that trend. Actually, it’s a little ahead of the trend. This week the advertising network released its third-generation SSL ad zones product.

“We provided the functionality for publishers to manually switch their ad zones to use https quite some time ago,” said founder and Chief Executive Officer Juicy Jay. “The ad zones previously in testing worked well for publishers, but our new version 3 banner codes now automatically work for either http and https interchangeably without modification by the publishers.”

SSL is the international standard for establishing encrypted links between web servers and browsers, ensuring security and privacy between websites and their users. Prior to Google’s announcement about rankings, few sites found the technology relevant unless they required users to log in or handled financial transactions.

Early adopters often found a major problem, though: Only SSL-secured ad zones can be used on SSL-secured web pages. Otherwise, ads will not display or a mixed-content warning will appear. Either situation can tip off a surfer his or her data may not be secure.

As an added benefit, the v3 JuicyAds banner codes are asynchronous and non-blocking, which means they load separately from the website page and may result in faster page loads, happy surfers and higher revenues for publishers.

JuicyAds is a marketplace for publishers and advertisers to buy and sell banner and pop-under advertising. The company will enter its 11th year in business in January 2017. To join the network as a publisher, click here or email sales@juicyads.com.