The move to deprive the pirates of advertising dollars has been led by the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), a non-profit created by the global advertising industry to fight ad-related crime.
And it comes less than a week after the U.S. Department of Justice seized nearly 400 sites that were streaming pirated World Cup content as part of its “Operation Offsides” campaign.
“Global sporting events like the World Cup are prime targets for criminals who try to intercept legitimate ad dollars by stealing popular streaming content,” said TAG chief operating officer Rachel Nyswander Thomas.
“The TAG AdSec Threat Exchange has created as an early-warning system to identify and block ad revenue to websites that are profiting from stolen content, and this first-of-its-kind initiative allows us to fight those criminals in near-real time by cutting off the flow of ad dollars to the content thieves targeting the World Cup.”