What is Industry Insights?

The Industry Insights is a collection of data generated through continuous client-side scanning of frequently trafficked websites, which are organized by market segment. It’s a benchmark that provides digital leaders with actionable data points to compare how their individual website(s) compare(s) with those of industry peers. These unique benchmarks are critical to understanding how unmanaged (and frequently unknown) third-party code can affect the consumer experience.

How should I interpret this data?

The data is a point-in-time analysis of client-side executing code averaged on a monthly basis for each website. Recognizing that digital is a dynamic environment—continuously changing for each individual accessing a website—this data provides high-level insight into the basic health of an industry’s digital ecosystem from security, compliance and performance perspectives.

The benchmark for each segment is unique to the industry. Organizations that view their digital properties as a strategic revenue channel will use significantly more code to customize, optimize and monetize the user experience compared to those who view them primarily as an information source.

How should this data be used?

This data provides an unfiltered perspective on what code is involved in rendering the user experience for industry-leading websites. Third-party code is the silent killer, destroying websites by inserting unauthorized code that damages your visitor’s experience. Inability to prevent or identify this activity results in lost revenue, brand reputation damage, and possible lawsuits and fines. Delivering unbiased guidance, you can compare your own company to the industry benchmark to pinpoint improvements for your own digital assets.

How is the data calculated?

Continuous, client-side scanning of these websites is averaged over the month for each property. The benchmark is an average of the data collected for all websites in the relevant industry segment.

Why did we create this industry index?

Malware attacks and data breaches continue to escalate, creating revenue and data privacy challenges for every business with a website/mobile app. These events also negatively affect consumers through harmful practices such as privacy invasion, credit card stealing, spread of misinformation, and other harmful practices. Many of these scenarios are caused by compromised third-party code operating in websites/mobile apps. As most of this code is unknown to the digital asset owner, this index aims to reveal the extent of the problem on websites frequently accessed by consumers.

The Media Trust is on a mission to fix the internet. We accomplish this by identifying all client-side code executing in our client environments and alerting on anomalies. A trustworthy World Wide Web will drive a safer, more enjoyable and profitable world for everyone.

How is this index different from other benchmarks?

The data represents a true user experience, not that of a simple Google bot. More than high-level performance metrics, this index captures 10 different data points pertaining to the security and regulatory risks present in a website. If left unchecked, these risks can lead to data breaches, cross-site scripting, eskimming and much more. The focus is on core industry data points that expose the overall risks propagating in digital environments that can negatively affect consumers. For these reasons, we don’t reveal the individual websites.

How were companies selected to be included in the Industry Index?

Industries are selected based on their target market: consumers. For each segment we selected leaders from the Alexa rankings whose websites are significant revenue and/or communication channels. The listing order is scrambled; there is no inference to excellence between the websites in each vertical index. However, the website behind the listing (e.g., Bank 1 or Publisher 5) remains the same. In several instances a firm volunteered to participate in order to see how they measured up to their industry peers.

How was the data collected?

Leveraging our proprietary scanning platform, The Media Trust continuously scanned these public-facing websites using a proprietary scanning algorithm and basic desktop-only user profiles. It does not address mobile or gaming devices, targeted user behavior profiles, geographies nor scanning rates specific to an enterprise’s risk acceptance threshold.

The scanning used a clean machine—one that is cleared of any prior website access history—to provide a more accurate picture of the code that executes when a consumer accesses the website for the first time. Without a clean machine, previous behavior indicators will influence code execution and thereby provide an exaggerated picture of what’s truly executing on consumer devices.

How often are the Industry Insights updated?

The index is updated monthly and supplemented with quarterly reports.

How does my company compare to others in an industry segment?

Need help evaluating how your website compares to industry leaders? Request a Free Assessment. In addition, you are welcome to ask for your organization to be included in the industry analysis. Just let us know: Info@MediaTrust.com