Adtools » Misc

Bash commands to detect script injections and malware

Sean — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:43:54 +0000

Bash commands to detect script injections and malware:
This was posted a while ago on stopbadware and it’s too good not to repost…

find . -name “*.js” | xargs grep -l “eval(unescape”
find . -name “*.php” | xargs grep -l “eval(base64_decode”

The first one will find any javascript file that contains the string “eval(unescape” which is the most common way of injecting malicious code. The second is a similar method for PHP files. (Source: https://badwarebusters.org/stories/show/20712)

Improve Digital’s Display Advertising Eco-System (2011/12)

Sean — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:57:44 +0000

We all know the Luma Landscapes diagram, we use it to scare our managers into how complex Advertising Operations, Inventory Management, Yield Optimisation etc… really is, and it usually does the job. However it was not meant for ‘us’, it was designed to give Investors an idea of the the complexities and nuances of the online advertising universe.

If you’ve not seen this already Joelle Frijters over at Improve Digital has recently posted up an article which takes that Luma landscape concept and reworks it.

Personally I prefer the Improve Digital version. Not only does it simplify the layout but it logically groups them into their core areas of specialism (and in doing so I feel clarifies the current field or providers & operators) but there’s also a helpful glossary of the every-changing acronyms we like to use.

Article: http://www.improvedigital.com/improve-digitals-display-advertising-eco-system-map-201112-gets-great-reviews
PDF: here

Netmining Panel: Mapping the Display Landscape (West Coast Edition)

Sean — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:53:03 +0000

Netmining Panel: Mapping the Display Landscape (West Coast Edition) from Netmining on Vimeo. Industry experts discuss how to successfully navigate the constantly evolving display ecosystem and identify valuable best practices for marketers. The panel features Alex Hooshmand of BlueKai, Qasim Saifee of OpenX, Raj Gajwani of TARGUSinfo, Anna Partel of Right Media – Yahoo! and Jeremy Woodlee of Google. Moderated by Maureen Little of Turn.

Download Netmining’s Guide to the Display Landscape here:
http://www.netmining.com/displayguide/

An alternative to dummyimage.com – placekitten.com

Sean — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:34:45 +0000

I’ve been a fan of dummyimage.com for a while now. However, I’m also a huge kitten/cat fan and sometimes I don’t want drab monochrome test or placeholder images, what I really want is fluffy kittens instead. Thankfully there are others who think similarly, enter placekitten.com. Placekitten allows you to generate aribtrarily sized images and have them populated with a picture of a fluffy kitten. eg;

http://placekitten.com/300/250	http://placekitten.com/300/600

Link: http://placekitten.com

Adweek singles out the ad world’s top programmers/technologists.

Sean — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:32:22 +0000

Ann Forbes Cooper at Adweek has released a list of what they see as “Ad Land’s” most innovative and creative programmers & developers and details some of their more inspirational creations. The list includes (in no particular order):

Joshua Hirsch, Big Spaceship
Marc Jensen, Space150
Ricardo Cabello, Freelancer
Aaron McGuire, Evolution Bureau
Markus Persson, Mojang AB
Evan Stark, Domani Studios
Scott Prindle, Crispin Porter + Bogusky
John Mayo-Smith, R/GA
Dave Riegler, TBWA\Chiat\Day
Keith Butters, The Barbarian Group

Link: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/top-10-technologists-135797.

What might a strict interpretation of the ‘consent’ provisions in the revised ePrivacy Directive look like?

Sean — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:54:20 +0000

If you work in AdOps in Europe then you’ll be aware of the legislation regarding cookie setting that is currently being proposed.

“IAB Europe, IAB Belgium, AudienceScience, Criteo, The Guardian, AdTech, Nielsen and Sanoma have launched a mock website to show what a strict interpretation of the consent provision in Article 5.3 of the revised ePrivacy Directive might look like. See www.cookiedemosite.eu. The initiative is primarily aimed at Dutch legislators where the threat of an ‘explicit consent’ regime remains very real.”

www.cookiedemosite.eu

Luma Ad Technology Landscape

Sean — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:03:28 +0000

I realised that my Luma Landscape post was a year out of date, here’s the latest from Luma Partners.

The openRTB Initiative

Sean — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:38:54 +0000

So, having just returned from a great Admonsters Publisher Event in Amsterdam I’ll be posting up quite a few related articles and links.There was a huge amount of discussion surrounding Real Time Bidding (RTB) platforms. As a publisher we rarely get to see some of the inner-workings of how these systems work but luckily there is a move towards greater transparency and ease of data-interchange mechanisms. The openRTB is something that is going a LONG way to helping that part of the industry grow it’s share of the market…. and to be applauded.

VIDEO: OpenRTB Roundtable Discussion from DataXu on Vimeo.

Google Chrome Developer Tools: Network Panel

Sean — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 09:48:29 +0000

Google have released a ‘network panel‘ to their Developer Tools that acts in a very similar way to other HTTP tracing tools like httpFox and httpWatch. This is a very welcome addition to an excellent set of tools for Chrome and means you’ll easily be able to trace what calls are being made from adtags and other advertising systems.

Some additional features I’d like to see are:

Search based filtering. Many sites will fire off a couple of hundred urls in a single page load, drilling down through the mess to those specific urls you’re looking for would be easier with some sort of filtering. httpWatch has probably the best filtering I’ve seen on any similar tool to date, I couldn’t see any search functions at all
On the timeline I’d like to see the a clearer indication of the various aspects of each connection eg; have the DNS lookup in one colour, connection in another, first-byte download in another etc. Whilst this is available if you go into each call/line-item it would be nice to have the option to customise this output.
It would be great to have the ability to export the data in different formats eg; CSV.
Display Flash objects in the preview tab. Currently it renders GIF, JPG PNG etc, it would be nice to have the Flash object rendered as well.
Display any video data eg; dimensions, codec, audio/video bitrates etc.
Non HTTP traffic such as streaming services, eg; RTMP, RTMPT, RTMPE, RTSP & MMS

It’s certainly a step in the right direction and I’m most grateful for this latest addition to Chrome. My continued favourite tool is httpWatch, not only does it provide excellent filtering/search capabilites but genrally makes tracing HTTP calls a little easier than the curent Google Developer Toolbar does. However, a team licence (that’s four licences) for httpWatch will set you back just under £1000.

Further Information:
http://code.google.com/chrome/devtools/docs/network.html