Ad Networks Gone Bad: The Vizi Drama Continues, Malware Ads Were Allowed To Run

Just when I thought I was heading for a quiet and peaceful end of the week, I started to receive endless reports of malware ads being served on many web properties, particularly to US-based users. Having witnessed (and reported) such problems not too long ago – remember the Vizi – Oridian war of accusations last week? – I had an uneasy feeling of déjà vu.

Cascading pop-ups, malware ads infested with trojans and other nasties, adult ads, you name it – they’ve all been served yet again through RMX (Right Media Exchange) but clearly originating elsewhere. Just when I’ve escalated about 3 such reports to our ad optimizer, the following message arrived, from, you guessed, Vizi.



Dear Publishers,

As you know there have been some problems on the RightMedia exchange that has affected Vizi and many other networks. We have been dealing with these issues and have been on the forefront of the fight against the misuse of the exchange. We have been working with both RightMedia/Yahoo and Federal Law Enforcement to catch these criminals!

We have taken some new policies that will make it harder for anyone to bring bad ads into our network. These changes will help ensure that less problems happen, and has also meant that we are banning approximately 25% of the possible revenue we can make. It was a hard decision – but the right thing to do.
However, yesterday while banning certain types of ads, I accidently made a mistake and put to to accept those type of ads. This has been fixed – and if any publisher was affected, please contact me personally.

Again, while these issues have not been caused by us, I want to extend a personal apology for not doing more initially to catch them and work harder to prevent them. My team is extremely amazing here at Vizi and they have been working extremely hard, day and night to make sure that all our clients and partner publishers are treated right. This is my personal responsibility and my fault – not them.
I hope you can continue to work with Vizi, and I thank you for the business and the relationship we have built.

Best,
Pesach Lattin
CEO, Vizi Inc

Well, dear Vizi, this is simply not going to cut it, and the explanation would be hilarious if it wasn’t, in fact, quite tragic. You’ve had huge problems for quite some time – and had done pretty much nothing about it,while ignoring emails and reports of bad ads sent your way. Why would publishers still stick with an ad network that has a “proven record” of failures, one may wonder?