The above screen grab shows BT Vision running a video ad around a pirate feed of live FA Cup content earlier this week picked up by our SnifferDog technology. It is likely that the client CPM on this is perhaps £2 while the agency probably purchased it for less that £1 - a nice little earner.
To purchase legitimate inventory against this demographic would cost @£15cpm with less profit for the agency.
On the face of it everyone is making money (except the FA) - but is that the end of the story ?
The agency may well be conveniently forgetting that recent rulings in the ECJ (L'Oreal) plus the rnbxclusive.com case show that all in value chain of piracy are exposed to civil and criminal liability. This is without considering the almost laughable situation that BT are advertising around pirate material delivered across their own network and yet will be chasing the viewers of this material under the Digital Economy Act.
One suspects that when the Marketing Director of BT ends up trying to defend himself in court over this the approach to saving a few pounds in inventory costs will seem very small time from a client perspective - especially in the context of an agency fired long ago. Our system has tracked over 800 brands acting in a similar way and we are more than happy to work with them to resolve this problem via our Content Protection Programme.