Malicious and disruptive ads have decreased year-over-year, but they still account for 1 in every 100 impressions, according to Confiant’s Demand Quality Report for Q1 2019. Confiant, an advertising security company, studied the most common issues for publishers and their platforms, including malicious ads, low-quality ads, and in-banner video ads.

Confiant found that over 20 per cent of user sessions might be impacted by a malicious or disruptive ad. The study also revealed that malicious and disruptive ads are much more common during weekends and holidays, with the highest number of incidents taking place over President’s Day weekend.

Confiant’s report showed that there is a sizable difference in quality between the best performing supply-side platforms (SSPs) and the worst. According to findings, the worst performing SSPs are 67 times as likely to deliver a malicious or disruptive ad. Most incidents found throughout the quarter came from the same under-performing SSPs, with more than 60 per cent of in-banner video ads and 60 per cent of security issues coming from three specific SSPs.

“This is Confiant’s fourth report and the first time we have access to year-over-year data. By sharing this data, publishers and platforms can better understand the health of the ad ecosystem and make decisions accordingly,” said Louis-David Mangin, Confiant’s CEO and co-founder. “Thankfully, malware and other ad quality issues are not intractable problems. With the right systems in place and commitment from the industry, we can tackle these issues.”