TikTok, Pandora Advertising Found on Pirate TV Platform TeaTV

An investigation by CNBC has shown that not only are pirated versions of popular movies and TV shows appearing on an online platform called TeaTV, but so are ads from major companies.

The companies, which include music industry heavyweights Pandora (owned by SiriusXM) and TikTok (owned by ByteDance), are inadvertently funding these activities through ads.

The investigation discovered ads on TeaTV from the following companies:

• TikTok
• Pandora
• Hulu
• Amazon
• Walgreens
• BET+
• Madden Mobile
• Pluto TV
• Yahoo! Mail

CNBC is pinning the blame for these ads on the complexity of the “digital content supply chain,” which makes it difficult for companies to track where their ads are appearing.  That’s an easy excuse for some, and many assert that companies need to do a better job in conveying to ad-tech firms which sites are unacceptable for their ads.

Beyond that, the ad-tech firms themselves could be more conscious of where they are placing ads. Still, it may be impossible to completely stop ads from appearing on sites like TeaTV.

The problem is exasperated by the fact that sites like TeaTV are not very transparent.

CNBC could not find where the company was located, or even if they are an actual company. There are no people publicly associated with the platform and no telephone numbers to call. All this makes it difficult to take these companies off the net and out of the digital content supply chain.

Cesar Fishman, who is a senior vice president for CreativeFuture, says that the placement of mainstream ads on pirate sites causes a multitude of problems. Not only are these advertisers in essence funding piracy, but the ads give an aura of legitimacy to the sites. It is quite possible that viewers do not even realize that they are watching pirated content.

While the advent of cheap streaming services has thwarted piracy in recent years, piracy is still a lingering issue. But massive piracy is now more of a video problem than an audio one, with music fans ditching torrents and downloading for free or low-cost alternatives like YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music. That’s putting enforcement groups like the IFPI and RIAA in a pickle, given that a major part of their missions are to eradicate piracy — which could be creating a perverse incentive to minimize or downplay recent victories against piracy.