Meanwhile, work management platform Asana announced completion of its $50 million Series E, bringing total 2018 funding to $125 million and cumulative funding to $213 million. The round was shared by a half-dozen investors.
Any chance you’d hear more about Amazon’s pre-Thanksgiving data breach was swept away by Friday’s report that personal information on up to a 500 million guests at Marriott, Sheraton, Westin, and other Starwood hotels was exposed in a hack of its reservation systems. The breach began in 2014 and was only shut down this past September. We also learned last week that more 60 million email accounts were exposed over two years by a breach at the U.S. Postal Service.
Ah, but here’s some good news: Google and anti-ad-fraud vendor White Ops announced they have dismantled one of the biggest and most sophisticated ad fraud operations ever. The :”3ve” botnet infected at least 1.7 million computers at any time, counterfeited more than 10,000 Web sites, and generated from 3 to 12 billion requests per day to sell fake online advertising. The U.S. Attorney in New York filed criminal charges against the fraudsters. This does count as good news, right?
It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying. IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.