Securing 3rd Party Ads

Question

Dear Sirs/Madams.

I want to switch over to using secure Apache webservers. I did some testing, I can get my AdServer to serve to HTTPS:// as the creative is hosted by me the adtag is mine and so is the clickthru..

However all 3rd party tags pop up the "content not secure...." box... Can I secure it?

I can't really find anyone who's successfully done this, and I'm beinging to think that you can't...

Answer 1

However all 3rd party tags pop up the "content not secure...." box... Can I secure it?

Only if you're using an advertising network that provides ads over HTTPS. Everything has to be HTTPS, including scripts, iframes and the final images used. Many networks don't give you this ability, but you'd have to check with the specific provider you're using.

You could theoretically stop the error message by having ad content appearing to come from your server, which is actually behaving as a proxy, but:

• most ad networks would view that very suspiciously; it would look like you were committing click fraud, and
• it's not actually “secure” — those errors don't appear for no reason! If there were a man-in-the-middle between your server and the ad network, they could inject content like scripts into your ad sources, compromising your site's own security through an XSS-like attack.

Answer 2

You should just be able to ask your thirdparties for Secure Tags. 99% of adversers should be able to do this. I know for sure that both Atlas and Doubleclick can generate secure tags.