Media, publishing, and advertising technology
Penetration Testing for Media and AdTech Companies
Media and adtech companies run some of the highest-traffic applications on the internet and hold subscriber, audience, and advertiser data that regulators and partners watch closely. Invadel tests publishing platforms, ad serving APIs, and the cloud behind them at a fixed price, with a free retest and audit-ready reporting.
The stakes
Why media companies get tested differently
Attackers use media properties for reach and for data. A compromised content management system becomes a distribution channel for malicious scripts to millions of readers. Subscriber databases hold payment details and identities. Ad serving infrastructure is abused for fraud, redirects, and malvertising. The APIs that exchange bids and audience segments in milliseconds rarely check authorization as carefully as they check latency. A leaked cloud credential reaches all of it at once.
Audience data brings the regulators. Publishers and adtech platforms with EU users answer to GDPR, and the data processing agreements with advertisers and partners make Article 32 testing a contractual obligation. Enterprise advertisers, agencies, and platform partners send security questionnaires before integrating. SOC 2 has become standard for adtech vendors selling to those buyers, and subscription businesses that store card data fall under PCI DSS.
A generic test rate-limits itself out of the interesting findings on a high-traffic platform and never touches the ad stack. Media exposure lives in the CMS plugins and editorial workflows, the subscription and paywall logic, and the real-time bidding and audience APIs. The cloud and CDN configuration serves all of it. Testers need to understand how content, money, and audience data move through the system.
What we test
The systems attackers go after first
Content management and publishing platforms
The CMS, editorial tools, and plugins that control what millions of readers load. Tested for privilege escalation between editorial roles, stored script injection, and paths to the deployment pipeline.
Subscription, paywall, and subscriber accounts
Registration, login, billing, and entitlement logic, tested for account takeover, paywall bypass, and exposure of subscriber identity and payment data across accounts.
Ad serving and bidding APIs
Real-time bidding, audience segment, and campaign management interfaces, tested for broken authorization between advertisers, data exposure in bid requests, and abuse of reporting endpoints.
Audience data platforms
Customer data platforms, analytics pipelines, and identity graphs, tested for access control gaps, export exposure, and the reach of one compromised integration key.
Cloud, CDN, and edge configuration
The AWS, Azure, or GCP environment and the CDN in front of it, tested for IAM escalation, exposed storage, cache poisoning, and origin exposure behind the edge.
Streaming and mobile apps
Video players, mobile apps, and connected TV clients, tested for entitlement bypass, insecure storage of tokens, and the backend APIs they call without the web’s protections.
Compliance
The frameworks that usually apply
- SOC 2
The report agencies and enterprise advertisers expect from adtech vendors, with the penetration test as evidence for the Security criteria.
- GDPR
Article 32 testing evidence for publishers and platforms processing EU audience data under advertiser and partner data processing agreements.
- PCI DSS
Requirement 11.4 testing for subscription and commerce systems that bring card data into the environment.
Services
What media and adtech teams usually buy
- From $5,200
Web Application Penetration Testing
Manual testing of your web app across the OWASP Top 10, business logic, and every user role, from $5,200.
- From $4,000
API Penetration Testing Services
REST, GraphQL, and SOAP testing for broken authorization, token flaws, and data exposure, from $4,000.
- From $6,800
Cloud Penetration Testing
Configuration and exploitation testing across AWS, Azure, and GCP, from $6,800.
- From $6,000
Mobile Application Penetration Testing
iOS and Android testing against the OWASP MASVS: storage, transport, runtime, and the API behind the app, from $6,000.
Penetration Testing as a Service
Recurring senior-led testing and validated scanning, delivered as one ongoing program.
How it runs
Typical engagements
Illustrative scopes for this industry, written to show what a test covers and what you walk away with. They are not client stories; our anonymized engagements are on the case studies page.
Typical engagement
Digital publisher after a malicious script incident
A digital publisher discovers a malicious script served to readers through a compromised third-party tag and wants its own platform tested before the next one. We test the CMS across contributor, editor, and administrator roles, the tag and script management workflow, and the AWS environment and CDN configuration behind the site. Findings include an editor role that can deploy arbitrary scripts and an exposed staging bucket. Both are fixed and retested, and the executive report goes to the board.
Typical engagement
AdTech platform closing an enterprise agency
An adtech platform selling a demand-side product to a large agency is asked for a SOC 2 report and a recent penetration test during procurement. We test the campaign management application across advertiser accounts, the bidding and reporting APIs, and the GCP environment running the bidder. An authorization flaw exposes one advertiser’s campaign performance to another. The fix is retested, the findings map to the Trust Services Criteria, and the attestation letter closes the review.
Typical engagement
Streaming service moving to a recurring testing program
A subscription streaming service shipping weekly across web, mobile, and connected TV finds that a single annual test cannot keep up. We build a program: quarterly manual test windows rotating through the web application, the mobile and TV clients, and the entitlement API. Validated scanning runs between windows, with rolling retests as fixes ship. Every customer and partner review gets a current report, and the same senior team returns each window.
FAQ
What media companies ask
01Does GDPR apply to a US media company?
If you offer content or services to people in the EU or monitor their behavior, which most publishers and adtech platforms do through analytics and advertising, yes. Article 32 requires regular testing of your security measures. The data processing agreements you sign with advertisers and partners usually make that testing an explicit contractual obligation with evidence attached.
02Can you test a high-traffic production site without affecting readers?
Yes. We test against staging wherever it exists and agree written rules for anything that must be tested in production. Rate limits that stay below your alerting thresholds, no denial-of-service techniques, and defined windows outside peak traffic. Fixed source addresses let your operations team distinguish our traffic from real attacks. Critical findings are escalated immediately rather than held for the report.
03Do you test the ad stack, or just the website?
Both. The bidding, audience, and campaign APIs are usually where the most serious authorization flaws live. They were built for speed and partner access rather than for hostile callers. API testing covers them role by role and partner by partner, alongside the web application, the CMS, and the cloud environment.
04How much does a media or adtech penetration test cost?
Web application testing starts at $5,200, API testing at $4,000, cloud testing at $6,800, and mobile testing at $6,000 with iOS and Android included. Each is fixed in writing before work starts with a free retest of remediated findings. Recurring programs for teams that ship weekly are quoted as one fixed annual price.
05What do agencies and enterprise advertisers expect to see?
A dated report from an independent firm covering the platform and its APIs, findings rated by severity, and evidence of remediation, usually alongside a SOC 2 report. Most reviews accept an attestation letter and an executive summary in place of the technical detail. We write both for that audience and provide the technical report separately for engineering.
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