USC Annnenberg Innovation Lab releases its second monthly Advertising Transparency Report

The USC Annenberg Innovation Lab recently released its second monthly Advertising Transparency Report.

According to an article from Variety, the first report, reporting on all of 2012, showed that Google and Yahoo were among the top online ad networks that had pirate-site ad placement.

However, Google has worked to “actively [dismantle] its advertising connections to content theft” and has since dropped from the monthly reports.

Despite Google’s work to counteract content theft, many other ad networks have moved in to fill the void. The list of ad networks with pirate-site ad placement is constantly changing because "there are always new entrants to this incredibly dynamic ad network market," the report said.

Not included in the first report, the second report also includes a sampling of non-media brands that had advertising on pirate-sites.

Variety claims this is “because those companies' ads are being serviced through massive aggregators, they often have no control over -- and in many cases, no knowledge of -- their appearance on pirate sites.”

Led by Professor Jonathan Taplin, the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab launched the monthly Advertising Transparency Reports at the beginning of the year in order to “inform brands' decisions about online ad [spending].”