Summary: Some of our publishers have received email alerts from Google DFP that Digital Throttle creative tags contain malware. As a result, DFP lines you have setup for Digital Throttle may not be serving impressions.
What Happened: Google recently updated their scanning service that is mistakenly flagging creatives that use a URL-shortening service, bit.ly, as malware.
What it is: Bit.ly is a program used to shorten URL’s and has no malware properties. The site is often used by advertisers to shorten an otherwise long URL string.
The Problem: Google DFP shuts down all creative tags, such as Digital Throttle, when even one advertiser was found to use bit.ly. Unfortunately, DFP doesn’t detail the exact advertiser or URL in their email to you. We were able to diagnose this issue with the help of our ad server, AppNexus.
Other Networks: You might have also received this notice for other network tags you use in DFP. We have heard from other ad networks and they too have been hit with this “false positive” malware notice from DFP.
The Fix: If not already, we expect Google will remove the flag from our creative shortly. Please be sure Digital Throttle DFP Line and Creative remain active in your DFP.
If you feel the creative is still blocked by DFP, we suggest you contact Google DFP support and ask them to review and restore the DFP creatives and lines in question. You can submit a support ticket to DFP through your DFP account and using this link: https://support.google.com/dfp_sb/answer/82240?hl=en#ts=3135907,3136010&contact=1.
In the Subject line, enter: “Malware Notice: Please Rescan”
In the Full Description line, we suggest you paste: We received notice the above-mentioned line and creative were scanned as potential malware. We’ve worked with our network partner, Digital Throttle, and believe the scan is a “false-positive” due to advertisers using a URL-shortening service such at bit.ly.
Ongoing: We take malware very seriously and only accept ads from trusted partners and each ad is audited. In fact, we email all sites in our network a monthly “Malware Update” listing suspicious advertiser URLs to block. Until this weekend, we’ve only had one (1) report like this from DFP and that was a few years ago!
Thank you for your patience and we will let you know when we receive any more news on the issue.
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