Once in a blue moon you come across a company that actually reads a complaint youve submitted to them and takes immediate action. AppNexus is one who really gets it with community engagement: Any ad network as big as theirs cant personally review every ad that goes through their pipes, so we can expect from time to time there may be an advertiser who uses unethical methods beyond the placement companys ability to police in advance. The key is how they handle it once its brought to their attention. I recently started seeing popup ads on some Yahoo News pages on my phone, falsely claiming my device was infected with a virus and pointing me to an app at Google Play which would presumably fix it. No computing device is immune to malware, but as a seasoned professional I maintain good security protocols on every device I use, and I know my system isnt infected. Besides, its an ad, not an app, so it really cant make such a determination anyway. It is, in short, the work of liars (and no, I wont give the fraudulent company any advertising here by naming them; just know that if you see a popup ad claiming your device is infected theyre liars and to be avoided). But given the unfair reputation Android has with malware (we can correct the many falsehood prevalent in such discussions in a future post if you like), I suspect many lay people would see such an ad and be frightened into downloading the app. I can think of few things as cheap and tawdry as lying to people to trick them into downloading your app. So I dropped a note to AppNexus letting them know about the fraudulent ad - their CEO responded within hours, and has directed one his employees to work with me to investigate the issue. Im impressed. I rarely see that level of quick action from any company, but it seems the folks at AppNexus are serious players working hard to maintain a stellar reputation. Kudos to their team. If I werent building my own ad servers Id use them for my own apps in a heartbeat. If you have apps that are supported by ads, I can say from my own experience that you can probably expect a rare level of stellar service from these folks. appnexus/
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:58:51 +0000