LEEUWARDEN, Netherlands – Performance-based marketing platform Traffic Company has declared war on malicious software that can creep undetected into advertising networks. The company recently unveiled its latest high-tech secret weapon: The Crawler, a proprietary warrior that carries on a constant battle behind enemy lines.
“The Crawler has been built to scan every single offer in our system,” said General Manager Wouter Groenewoud. “There have been malicious offers in the market for quite some time, but they have proven to be very difficult to avoid.”
Traffic Company avoids the malicious-offer problem by offering primarily self-built, proprietary promotions. However, the company also oversees offers provided by more than 4,500 “outside” advertisers.
“We have very little control over their content, and this is where The Crawler comes in,” Groenewoud said. “The Crawler has been custom built to simulate a wide array of devices, geos and mobile operators and check for potential problems.”
Among the potentially malicious items on The Crawler’s search-and-destroy list are malware and viruses; JavaScript alerts, prompts, confirms and onbeforeunload pop-ups; app store redirects and auto downloads of APK or other files via SMS links.
According to Groenewoud, The Crawler is a tireless, thorough soldier. Several times a day, the juggernaut begins at an offer’s landing page and scans all pages at every redirect until reaching its final destination at the offer site’s call-to-action. Each link leading from that page is checked, as well. Multiple devices carriers, and geographical zones are employed in each pass.
If The Crawler detects anything suspicious at any point in the process, it immediately disables the offer.
“We even disable certain offers just for a particular source type — for example, offers with JavaScript alerts for pop-under traffic only,” Groenewoud said. “In February alone, we disabled over 150 offers.”
Traffic Company frequently adds more mobile proxies and geographical areas in order to simulate mobile users’ experience and improve the quality and reliability of scans, Groenewoud noted.
“With this tool, Traffic Company has developed a great solution to fight against viruses, JavaScript alerts, app-store redirects, auto-downloads and other malicious software,” he said. “We cannot guarantee 100 percent that there will never be any malicious software in our network, but we can guarantee 100 percent that we do everything we can to avoid this.”
The Crawler is one of the reasons Traffic Company earned record revenue in the first half of 2015, Groenewoud said.
“We’ve already processed more than 2.5 billion clicks and paid out more than $14.5 million U.S. to affiliates,” he revealed.
Not inclined to rest on its success, in June Traffic Company released what Groenewoud called “a small but powerful feature” that provides support for third-party tracking tools like AdsBridge and Voluum.
“These tools give you the possibility to track, compare and optimize all your mobile and web campaigns in real-time and in one place,” Groenewoud said. “With just a few easy steps you can set this up yourself, and we’ll make sure every conversion is sent to your preferred third-party platform.”
For more information about Traffic Company, its offers and its software systems, visit TrafficCompany.com or e-mail info@trafficcompany.com.
