We’ve got trust issues: ad quality, trust, and revenue with Confiant’s Danielle Koffler

BY ROB BEELER + DANIELLE KOFFLER, DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT AT CONFIANT

As digital media organizations continue to evolve, so do the risks tied to advertising. Programmatic has expanded reach and revenue, but has also increased exposure to malicious, policy-violating ads that move faster than traditional controls can keep up with. When those threats slip through, everyone pays the price: strained trust, disrupted user experiences, and real revenue impact.

Here, Rob sits down with Danielle Koffler, Director of Product at Confiant, to unpack why ad quality has become a core business concern – not just a technical one. Drawing from Confiant’s H1 Mid-Year MAQ Index 2025, they explore how today’s ad quality landscape has become more pernicious and less predictable, and how publishers can mitigate risk, protect revenue, and restore trust.

Rob: Hi Danielle. Your latest report shows significant variation in violation rates across browsers, devices, and regions. How should publishers prioritize their risk mitigation when exposure isn’t uniform across their audience?

Danielle: Threat activity is not evenly distributed. Patterns can shift quickly as criminals follow the path of least resistance, so what looks like a concentrated problem today may move somewhere else tomorrow. Publishers can optimize protection by focusing on full-audience coverage rather than one slice of traffic.

Broad, real-time visibility helps anticipate shifts and keep risk in check across the entire user base.

Rob: You highlight that a small percentage of ads accounts for the majority of harmful or policy-violating behavior. What can publishers do to address those high-impact segments without over-correcting or slowing monetization?

Danielle: The key is precision. Most ads are legitimate and monetizable, so the goal is to pinpoint the small set of creatives responsible for the most harm. Criminals follow the money, which means publishers need to be able to distinguish genuine demand from high-impact threats. Confiant evaluates every impression in real time and blocks only harmful outliers before they render. This protects user experience and business continuity without sacrificing supply or revenue. It’s control without compromise: eliminate the riskiest ads while allowing the monetization engine to run at full strength. 

And critically, real-time interventions create the feedback loops needed to work upstream using exposure data to identify, disrupt, and ultimately remove threat actors from the ecosystem, rather than just block their ads at the point of delivery.

Rob: The report shows that SSPs vary widely in the cleanliness of the demand they deliver. How should publishers evaluate partners when performance and risk don’t always correlate?

Danielle: Not all high-revenue SSPs successfully mitigate risk, and vice versa, so publishers need a more nuanced approach than just violation rates or yield. Policies, practices, and inventory matter, but also ask: How does the SSP respond when issues arise? Are they transparent about sources and quick to remove those causing problems? Do the same patterns repeat?

All platforms face challenges, and sophisticated threat actors evade detection. What matters is how SSPs behave when they are the pathway for an attack. That’s why strong partners who value ad security don’t need to be cut off if real-time blocking is in place. Publishers should evaluate whether the trust and partnership they experience align with performance. 

Rob: With Prebid and other client-side setups increasing exposure surfaces, how should publishers balance control and transparency against operational risk?

Danielle: Client-side setups provide transparency and flexibility, but as they are more open than managed environments like Google Open Bidding and Amazon TAM, malicious activity is more likely. For instance, the data shows that when Prebid was the primary framework, violation rates were consistently higher than in environments where malware scanning is built in.

Publishers need broad demand to maximize revenue – direct deals alone aren’t enough. So they must be discerning about SSPs and not assume any security solution catches everything. It’s important to identify high-risk platforms that should be blocked entirely, and then layer real-time protection on top of the partners that remain. Confiant helps with both identifying demand sources that consistently introduce risk, and block malicious creatives in real time so publishers can keep their demand open without constant operational strain.

Users don’t care about Prebid vs Open Bidding vs TAM; they care about safe experiences. Meanwhile, publishers can preserve revenue and control while reducing exposure through selective partnerships and dynamic protection.

Rob: Your data suggests that video, rich media, and interactive formats behave differently in terms of violations. How can publishers adapt QA processes to these unique risks?

Danielle: These formats introduce more complexity, and therefore, more room for abuse, especially when threat actors use cloaking or behavior-shifting tactics to hide in high-value impressions. Traditional QA wasn’t built for formats that change after the initial load, so static checks often miss the highest-impact threats.

Publishers need protection that can keep pace with how these formats behave in the wild. Evaluating creative behavior on execution, rather than after the event, helps catch cloaked or conditional actions before a user encounters them. This is critical for complex formats, where behavior can shift post-load. With the right checks, publishers can leverage these formats without adding burden.

Rob: The report points out that gambling, pharma, and crypto are responsible for disproportionate violations. How should publishers rethink category-level policies?

Danielle: Category-level policies are often aligned to the content policies for that publisher. Choosing to block a vertical can have a revenue cost, but choosing to serve a vertical that doesn’t align with your brand promise (or is illegal) has a cost as well. 

These verticals make up a high rate of blocked categories because they each carry reputational risk and are related to regulations that put publishers at risk. What’s more, they consistently show higher violation rates because they attract two types of activity at once: legitimate advertisers with real budgets, and bad actors who exploit the same high-value environment. We recommend focusing on internal alignment of standards for your site and selecting categories accordingly. 

Rob: Given how quickly threat types evolve, what should publishers do to make ad quality strategies adaptive rather than reactive?

Danielle: As per the report, attackers don’t just iterate; they rotate tactics, creating an unpredictable landscape for publishers, so building defenses around last quarter’s threats is futile. Strategies must be adaptive from the ground up:

• Start with real-time validation – monitoring that evaluates ads client-side and evolves as the threat actors pivot. 
• Track performance by partner and format – as SSP violation rates range widely from 0.005 to 1.46 percent
• Don’t rely solely on internal detection and blocking – sharing threat intelligence and applying upstream pressure plays a significant role in helping remove malicious campaigns and enforce policy. At Confiant, we reach out to platforms experiencing issues, but often it takes the voice of the publishers to really move the needle.

Rob: Overall, you emphasize that ad quality protects both revenue and user trust. What metrics or signals should publishers track to improve user experience?

Danielle: Publishers can track trust through on-site signals like complaints, bounce rate, and session length. When SSPs send cleaner demand and repeat issues taper off, controls and feedback loops are working. As publishers, SSPs, and standards groups push for accountability, users enjoy smoother experiences, and teams face fewer fire drills. When both user and partner signals improve together, trust is being rebuilt across the entire ecosystem. 

Ready to safeguard and restore trust?

Ad quality can no longer be reactive. Publishers need real-time visibility, precision controls, and intentional demand partnerships to protect both revenue and user experience. By reducing repeat violations and clarifying where risk truly comes from, teams can spend less time firefighting and more time building sustainable growth. To learn how Confiant helps publishers block high-impact threats in real time while keeping demand open, request a free trial: Ad Security Solutions | Confiant.

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This is content created in paid partnership with Confiant. We only feature partners who we believe bring real value to the publisher community.