Targeting Piracy App Advertisers May Be Ineffective, Red Points CEO Says

Pirate websites and apps always will find advertisers, so an effort by ad agency partnership Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) to track piracy apps and convince marketers not to advertise with them is unlikely to move the needle on piracy, blogged anti-piracy tech firm Red Points CEO Laura Urquizu Friday. Media companies would be better served trying to find ways to more quickly take down content-infringing websites, links and apps, she said. Most such pirate apps don't garner much major advertiser support, but given their high volumes of traffic they still get advertisers, though more along the lines of "annoying pop-ups [and] scams for making money online," Red Points said. TAG said the blog post "misses the point entirely, as TAG's new app anti-piracy tool is not a silver bullet, but a single piece of TAG's comprehensive approach to fighting content piracy across the industry. ... Only by working together as an industry to exchange information, use cutting-edge anti-piracy services, and raise the standards for all companies can we address this insidious threat. Nearly a dozen established, effective anti-piracy vendors have already been validated by TAG to offer anti-piracy services."