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Advertising | Industry-Research

Malicious ads are down. But don’t rest easy yet.

Even among the largest SSPs, there is an enormous difference in quality: The worst performing SSP is 60 times more likely to deliver a malicious ad than the best. Premium publishers need to vet their SSP partners carefully and be aware of how each SSP deals with malicious, low-quality, and In-banner video ads.

Confiant recently conducted our fifth research study on malvertising and ad quality in the digital advertising ecosystem. Confiant’s Demand Quality Report analyzes a normalized sample of over 120 billion impressions and captures unique insights into the quality of ads served by the programmatic marketplace. 

How’s the industry doing in Q2?

The chart below shows malicious, In-banner video (IBV), and low-quality ads as a percentage of total impressions over the past five quarters. In Q2, we saw a significant drop in malicious ads and In-banner video (IBV) ads. Malicious ads are down from a high of 0.54% in Q4 2018 to 0.25% in Q2 of this year, the lowest rate observed in our five reports. In-banner video ads are also at an all-time low at  0.10% of impressions in Q2, down from 1.40% one year ago. We suspect that if this trend continues, IBV ads will be all but extinct by the end of 2019. 

However, this isn’t to say trouble isn’t lurking, given the highly dynamic nature of online advertising. Low-quality ads continues to be problematic with an increase from 0.14% in Q1 to 0.18% in Q2. 

What’s driving these declines? 

The decline of malicious and in-banner video ads defies a single explanation. However, trends suggest collaboration efforts from the following could be helping:

  • The near-universal adoption of ads.txt on top sites, which is driving out arbitrage and unauthorized resale. 
  • Increased vigilance on the part of the SSPs when it comes to ad quality issues
  • The use of creative-verification solutions to improve industry defenses
  • Industry initiatives like TAG’s Certified Against Malware program
  • Better coordination between publishers and ad platforms, which narrows the brief window of time that malvertisers have before their exploits are detected and removed. 

What challenges lie ahead? 

Even with these improvements, we found that one in every 200 impressions are marred by a serious security or quality issue. We also found that rates of malicious activity vary significantly based on the day of the week. Impressions served on Sunday are three times more likely to deliver a Malicious payload than those served on Thursday. 

Although we are seeing a decrease in malicious and In-banner video ads this quarter, security and quality issues continue to change and evolve. Our data identifies what’s on the rise and what publishers are monitoring and blocking in accordance with their business needs and expectations of their audience. The rate of ads that have audio on startup continue to be a top issue that publishers flag with 92% blocking them from their sites. We are also seeing a large increase of publishers blocking heavy ads (800kbs or higher), Audio on Click, and Audio on Hover. Lastly, Malicious ads remain a fairly concentrated problem, with over 50% of impressions coming from just five providers. 

It’s worth it

There are huge disparities in quality across top SSPs. Thus, it’s imperative that publishers thoroughly vet SSPs prior to integration and monitor them on an ongoing basis. Ad quality issues are often highly concentrated. So, an informed publisher can minimize user-experience issues by avoiding  poorly performing SSPs – often with little impact to monetization.

Perspectives

The war on ad fraud: Why publishers need an armory to win the battle

It’s difficult to track the true cost of ad fraud, with estimates varying from $5.8 billion to $23 billion in 2019. But no matter what the estimate, fraudsters are taking advantage of the programmatic ecosystem’s complexities to funnel ad dollars to fake websites that should be going to legitimate publishers.

Yet digital publishers have power in the fight against ad fraud. In fact, the websites that are doing everything right can be a major part of the solution to the digital ad fraud problem. Publishers can take steps to reduce fraud and get rewarded for their quality content and audience.

The impostor problem

Media buyers have thousands of sites to choose from when buying ads programmatically. Their problem isn’t a lack of options; it’s having assurance that the sites are legitimate with human audiences. Fraudsters can create bots to look like humans, and fake sites to look like premium sites.

That’s where the fraudsters are winning. They enter the advertising ecosystem with an army of bots that look legitimate enough to fool media buyers into believing they’re placing an ad in front of their target audience at a lower cost than a premium site. Quality sites end up competing with illegitimate sites that look legitimate, though they don’t offer advertisers human audiences.

Fake websites and fake users give advertisers no return on their investment. Both publishers and advertisers lose because the money intended for a legitimate publisher is diverted into the pockets of bad actors.

One solution isn’t the solution

There are many valuable anti-fraud tools available today including fraud detection software and inventory/seller verification initiatives such as ads.txt. While it’s important for publishers to incorporate accredited solutions into their anti-fraud arsenal, it’s also important not rely solely on any one solution.

For example, the 2019 ANA/White Ops Bot Baseline report revealed that less than half of all ad impressions are able to be fully, transparently validated by measurement tools. Fraud detection companies use different methodologies that produce varied results whether the ad campaigns or the publishers’ pages are tagged.

As another example, sourced traffic may be engineered to pass through fraud detection technologies. A publisher may think that the ad fraud detection tools they have in place are preventing fraud from occurring on their website, but sourced traffic may introduce bots unknowingly.

Since there are many angles to the ad fraud problem, it takes a multi-layered, integrated approach to confront the problem as well. Publishers have opportunities to go beyond current solutions and stand out as quality publishers.

What publishers can do

It’s important that publishers use a holistic approach to ad fraud prevention and detection that incorporates a variety of solutions to ensure all aspects of a website are covered from traffic sources to ad delivery. There are several steps publishers can take to limit their exposure to ad fraud and reduce the risk to their media buying clients.

Follow best practices for driving traffic to your site

Take advantage of your content that attracts human audiences and promote it through legitimate marketing methods such as paid ads, e-newsletters or social media. Don’t source traffic, which can invite invalid traffic to your website. Monitor traffic sources to identify any suspicious patterns. Filter traffic from bots and data centers to prevent ads from being served to invalid traffic.

Educate your clients

Communicate how your quality content gives media buyers a greater return on investment. Inexpensive ads may generate lots of clicks at a lower CPM than ads on premium websites, but nonhuman clicks will never convert into paying customers. Quality content attracts human audiences. Next time you have a client meeting, simply ask, “Are you sure you are advertising on quality sites?” An educated advertiser will understand the value of investing in human audiences and quality publishers will get rewarded for their hard work.

Implement industry solutions

While no one solution can solve the entire ad fraud problem, integrating multiple tools into your overall fraud protection plan can go a long way. Adopt tools such as ads.txt, IAB Tech Lab’s OpenRTB Version 3.0, and accredited ad fraud detection software.

Engaging in an independent, third-party website audit can identify areas of risk and help publishers make improvements. A website audit also assures advertisers that steps are being taken to provide them with the highest level of transparency and a safe place to reach their target audience that will provide a greater return on their media investment.

Learn more about what you can do to help minimize ad fraud by downloading the AAM white paper: Three Truths That Help Confront the Digital Ad Fraud Crisis.

Industry-Research

Ad fraud growth slows for the first time in four years

White Ops and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) once again measure bot fraud in the digital advertising ecosystem in their fourth study, 2018-2019 Bot Baseline. They found that illegitimate traffic sourcing is declining and that the marketplace is working better than ever before to fight digital fraud.

Importantly, this year fraud is down 11% from 2017, accounting for a $5.8 billion revenue loss globally. The rates for desktop ad fraud are the lowest historically: 11% in 2014, 9% in 2016–17, and 8% in 2018–19. Fraud attempts account for approximately 20 to 35 percent of all ad impressions. However, actual fraud happens in a much smaller percentage. Still, ad fraud continues to be a problem, taking shape in new, creative, and hard-to-detect forms.

Successful implementation

The digital ad fraud fight has had help from the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). TAG provides best practices to reduce fraud activity and encourages transparency among participants. TAG also requires the use of ads.txt, which helps reduce domain spoofing. The fact that traffic sourcing has become more difficult and expensive is helping to reduce retail bot buying on the web. However, to keep the numbers moving in the right direction, marketers and agencies must ensure that all ad spending is highly scrutinize and comes with a high level of validatability.

Challenges Ahead

Less than Half of All Impressions Are Fully, Transparently Validatable

In fact, validatability is critical moving forward. White Ops reviewed more than 50 billion third-party ad server impressions in this study. Less than half of the impressions meet the highest standard of third-party validatability. Some impressions do not support a dynamic fraud detection tag via JavaScript, others offer limited third-party validatability by design (e.g. walled gardens). Selling media under conditions that do not support high third-party validation offers opportunities for fake inventory.

Best practices

Increased ad fraud awareness has made it a higher priority among marketers, which has helped slow its growth. It’s important that everyone in the supply chain talks to vendors to find out how they measure for invalid traffic (e.g. using general detection methods, or uses sophisticated IVT detection methods, etc.).

Other best practices include:

  • Work with vendors who have implemented ads.txt.
  • Use an MRC-accredited anti-fraud vendor.
  • Decline to buy a “tonnage” of inventory.
  • Include language on non-human traffic in your terms and conditions to ensure your company only pays for non-SIVT or non-IVT impressions.

Fraudulent impressions are now detected before they are paid for due to DSPs and SSPs filtering out these bid requests. Unfortunately, fraud continues to evolve in new formats. However, if the industry continues its efforts to make this practice unprofitable, there is less incentive to supply ad fraud.

Perspectives

5 steps to protect your website from digital ad fraud

There are many estimates for how much the digital advertising industry loses to ad fraud every year. Whether the number is $6 billion or $60 billion, fraud is a critical issue that causes advertisers to waste their ad spend and digital publishers to miss out on revenue that is stolen by fraudsters.

There are steps that everyone in the supply chain—including publishers—can take to protect their businesses against fraud. Here are a few suggestions to reduce your website’s risk for becoming a target for ad fraud.

1. Don’t Purchase Traffic

Legitimate publishers work hard to create quality content and drive audiences to that content. There are vendors that sell a fixed number of website visits for a fixed price. If the promise of generating a fixed number of website visits for a few dollars seems too good to be true, that’s because it probably is. A publisher might not know that the traffic is robotic because it was designed to pass through fraud detection as human. The best way to keep bots off your site is to avoid buying sourced traffic. Drive human audiences to your website through legitimate marketing activities such as email campaigns, sponsored social media posts and search engine marketing.  

2. Separate Humans from Bots  

There are some easy-to-implement preventive tools publishers can use to increase human interaction and limit bots. Encourage users to register for website access or implement a paywall. CAPTCHAs are another method that give users simple tests that only humans can answer. Newer CAPTCHA programs are efficient at determining whether a visitor is a human with little or no user input. Another non-intrusive technique to detect bots is referred to as a “honeypot,” which is an invisible image or form field on a webpage. While humans can’t see it, bots parsing through the html code will interact with it. Once identified, this nonhuman traffic can be filtered out of site measurement reports.

3. Continuously Monitor Traffic

It is important for publishers to understand where their site traffic is coming from and to continuously monitor traffic sources. A critical part of every digital marketing campaign is setting up the landing page URL to determine which campaign is responsible for traffic. A publisher might drive traffic by running a social media contest or sending an email blast. These types of marketing activities can be easily identified in web analytics. However, if the source is unknown or if the traffic exhibits suspicious characteristics such as spikes at unusual times or if it’s coming from one location or device type, these are red flags that the publisher needs to address. Publishers can take the proactive step of protecting media buyers by filtering traffic from bots and data centers and encourage their advertising partners to do the same. This prevents ads from being served to nonhuman traffic and increases exposure to real viewers.

4. Don’t Rely Solely on Fraud Detection Companies

Ad fraud detection services are a significant part of how the market transacts because they measure general and sophisticated invalid traffic and add friction to combat fraud. There are, however, limitations to any technology and different methodologies used, so it’s important to implement good business practices and human intervention to guard against bot traffic on your site and help minimize the risk of fraud.  

5. Follow Best Practices

Quality publishers do everything possible to minimize the risk of exposing their clients to fraud. By adhering to best practices, you can assure advertisers that you are taking necessary steps to attract human audiences and eliminate bots.

  • Work with accredited vendors you can trust (and make sure those vendors do the same).
  • Establish good business practices for monetizing your site such as those mentioned above.
  • Educate your staff to make sure they know that they are responsible to follow best practices.
  • Keep up with current and upcoming industry solutions. Publisher adoption of ads.txt, for example, helps demand-side platforms detect unauthorized digital sellers. With the release of OpenRTB version 3.0, which includes “Ads.cert: Signed Bid Requests,” the industry is taking the next step to improve transparency and security in the buying and selling process by ensuring that bid requests cannot be tampered with by downstream parties.
  • Engage in an independent, third-party audit to identify areas for improvement and show advertisers that you are taking steps to provide transparency and a safe place to reach their target audience.
Learn more about what you can do to help minimize ad fraud by downloading the AAM white paper: Three Truths That Help Confront the Digital Ad Fraud Crisis.
Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

Spring is in the air for advertisers and premium publishers. But we need to cultivate the opportunity for revenue growth.

Maybe this is true everywhere. But in the northeast, we’ve reached the time of the year when nearly everyone has had just about enough of winter and is eager for warmer days. And, with OTT buds starting to bloom and brand safety and other concerns driving brands to invest with trusted partners, premium digital publishers may also be wondering if their long cold winter of online advertising could see signs of warming.

A recent report from MediaRadar, indicated that programmatic ad spend from a number of advertisers shrunk year-over-year from 2017 to 2018. While some brands may have become more reluctant to spend money in programmatic, directing funds out of the programmatic ecosystem is typically a temporary measure. Advertisers are building their internal expertise and seeking ways to get the benefits of programmatic (such as automation and the ability to leverage their increasing store of customer data) without the downside of low or unknown media quality. Emarketer has predicted increasing momentum towards private marketplace or programmatic direct deals through 2020. This reflects advertiser expectations that trusted publisher partnerships will best meet the demand for quality inventory.

Market Pressure

In addition to the growing sophistication of buyers, other trends in the marketplace are also conspiring to shift advertiser spend to premium publishers. Increasing consumer interest in privacy and data governance, kicked off by initiatives like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act, will make it harder for lesser-known inventory providers to use targeting and consumer data to win brand dollars.

The rise of OTT gives premium publishers a unique carrot for digital ad buyers. This makes it difficult for lesser-known publishers to access inventory at scale across this new channel, unless there are significant changes to the ecosystem that empower smaller players. Given that publishers see the nascent OTT market as the first major bulkhead in winning the dollars currently devoted to linear TV, it’s unlikely that we’ll see the market open up to anywhere near the degree we have seen with mobile or desktop advertising. The winning platforms – companies like Apple, Amazon, and Roku – and the winning publishers – the major broadcasters and other household names for video content – are likely to keep the market under tight rein.

Value Matters & Values Matter

However, the wild card in this whole equation is the degree to which advertisers can feel confident that they are getting what they pay for. This applies not only to audience reach, but also a quality playback experience, meaning a viewable, brand-safe, and non-fraudulent impression. Without transparency on inventory quality, advertisers will continue to seesaw between investing in digital and pulling back spend to put it into other channels, as we have seen over the course of the last few years.

Transparency lays the foundation for trust between buyer and seller, and it is difficult for buyers and sellers to work together to establish this trust if they are relying on numbers from two different sources. All too often, publishers measure using one set of numbers while advertisers are using another. This inevitably results in discrepancies. It is difficult for publishers and advertisers to work together to support a transparent marketplace when they are measuring using two different methodologies. Standardizing on a single set of numbers on the buy and sell-side could also reduce the number of calls to supporting vendors’ ad code. It also makes it easier for buyers and sellers to work together to streamline the technology, reducing latency and other issues.

Standards and Issues

The good news is that the industry has never been in a better position to solve the problem of transparent cross-screen measurement. We as an industry have for the first time introduced measurement-specific ad standards. Most notably, these include the Open Measurement initiative, including the Open Measurement SDK, and Open Measurement for web. Prior measurement efforts piggybacked on technical standards like VPAID and MRAID, which were introduced to support rich media, not to provide accurate reporting on inventory quality. Having a standard designed expressly to support measurement that works across all devices is a great development.

We need to move the industry towards a single technical standard for measurement. We must get publishers and advertisers on board to utilize a common methodology to measure inventory quality. And we need to tackle measurement issues head on when they arise. This proactive approach is surely preferable to finger pointing and fighting over makegoods.

Now we are at the point where it’s either springtime or more cold lean years for publishers whose content deserves better. We can let dozens of competing proprietary approaches fragment the nascent digital TV ad industry. Or we can agree not to let that happen and work together to align the buy-side, sell-side, and the standards used for measurement. The outcome of that decision could mean the difference between five years to a fully digital ecosystem – or 15.

About the Author

Michael Tuminello is VP of Publisher Products at Integral Ad Science. He works to ensure premium publishers inventory achieves its full value potential. He plays an active role in helping to develop and improve industry standards. Michael is a two-time winner of the IAB Service Excellence award (2015 and 2019), as well as the MMA Smarties award for individual contribution to the mobile advertising industry. He was previously a Product Leader at Innovid, Sizmek, and Unicast. 

Perspectives

2019 will be tough on ad fraud—and that’s great news for publishers

As the year winds down and we look ahead to 2019, it’s time to take stock of what changed in 2018, and what it means for the year to come. This year’s changes are not only next year’s challenges, but also next year’s opportunities. The digital landscape will become tougher in 2019 and the digital content industry will be no exception.

This year we saw significant and welcome change in how the world at large treats some of digital’s most prominent and longest-running dilemmas. A series of indictments handed down this year, combined with an ongoing investigation into at least one New York-based publisher make it clear that the U.S. Department of Justice will no longer treat ad fraud as an unavoidable cost of doing business in digital. Instead, the government plans to treat ad fraud like what it is: the intentional theft of advertising dollars. While that’s bad news for anyone peddling fraudulent traffic, it’s great news for the ecosystem as a whole, and for premium publishers in particular.

A positive outlook

The fact that the Justice Department is getting serious about ad fraud may not seem like a particularly positive sign for the digital content business. After all, it’s certain to occasion some difficult conversations between buyers and sellers in the short term as officials put pressure on digital to clean up its act. However, taken another way, the move by federal law enforcement is a sign of respect for an industry that has finally reached maturity. Digital is finally seen as capable of playing by the same rules that other businesses do, both online and off.

These interventions by law enforcement officials in recent months have cast new levels of scrutiny on the digital media space. That spotlight, while intense, will also enable premium publishers to shine by differentiating themselves from the fraudsters being exposed.

The coming year presents a huge opportunity for publishers that can successfully position themselves to take advantage of the drive toward quality media. Here are a couple of critical tips:

Know your buyer

Buyers may be shifting more ad spend to programmatic, but that doesn’t mean that it’s time to de-prioritize your direct buyer relationships. Partner with your buyers to identify their unique needs. In the current climate, low levels of fraud are going to be on everyone’s wish list. These insights can be used to help package your inventory for programmatic channels and private marketplaces where premium ad dollars are increasingly flowing as marketers seek out quality guarantees.

Know yourself

Partnering with a third-party verification and optimization provider can provide more insight into the kind of quality metrics that are increasingly top of mind for buyers. As fraud investigations ramp up in 2019, media buyers will be under increasing pressure to ensure that they’re buying genuine human impressions from transparent sources. Being able to authenticate your own inventory, understand quality levels across your properties, and hold any traffic partners accountable will provide a huge advantage in conversations that will be increasingly quality driven.

Onward to 2019

Authorities getting tough on ad fraud is long overdue, and will lead to some tough but necessary conversations. It will also give premium publishers, those that are creating quality content for engaged human audiences, a chance to differentiate themselves from the bad actors among us. Ad fraud has been a murky, under-discussed digital challenge for too long. That lack of exposure has only allowed bad actors to blend in with responsible businesses. This heightened scrutiny will highlight the differences between the two, and bring about very welcome change.

Advertising | Perspectives | Revenue

The next frontier in digital ad fraud: local markets

Digital advertising fraud continues to be an industry-wide problem. Estimates of dollars lost to fraud range from $6 billion to $16 billion annually. Much of the conversation has been on preventing fraud in open ad exchanges on a national level. But digital ad fraud can affect anyone who buys and sells digital advertising, including local and national publishers and advertisers.

With local markets becoming a target, the ad fraud crisis might seem to be spiraling out of control. But there is hope. The war on ad fraud is winnable. National and local marketers have the power to steer their budgets toward legitimate websites with human audiences. But how do we get there?

Here we unravel this often confusing and complicated topic to uncover how ad fraud is affecting local markets and what publishers can do to minimize its impact.

Why local markets?

Fraudsters go where the money is. This year in the U.S., mobile ad spending is expected to surpass television advertising. Pair this influx of money with a platform where anti-malware and ad fraud detection is immature or non-existent, and mobile advertising platforms and local markets become prime targets for ad fraud.

How does local ad fraud happen?

Bad actors exploit one of the strengths of local markets: local audiences. Recent research from BIA/Kelsey estimates that out of $76 billion in local ad spending, almost $3 billion is lost to geotargeting ad fraud annually. Marketers want to reach their audiences on their mobile devices when they are in specific locations. Fraudsters take advantage of the appeal of geotargeted advertising by faking a device’s location. This means ads run on “devices” that declare GPS coordinates, but that data can be easily faked, allowing fraudsters to steal from locally targeted ad budgets.

Dr. Augustine Fou, cybersecurity and ad fraud researcher, in partnership with BIA/Kelsey, conducted an experiment that compared mobile ad performance in programmatic campaigns targeting Houston during a hurricane and arbitrary market with a very targeted audience: Butte-Bozeman, Montana.

The ad campaigns specifying these two geographic areas were successfully executed by the programmatic exchanges, but the results were not logical. For example, 100 percent of the ads were loaded on Android devices and all ad impressions were generated at 5 a.m. Houston time and 4 a.m. Bozeman time. These findings, among others, show that the app usage in these campaigns did not follow the patterns of typical human behavior and were the result of fraudulent activity.

This initial test was expanded to include the geotargeting of 16 DMAs through programmatic media buying. While there were variations in the levels of fraud between DMAs, the results showed similar rates of ad fraud (shown in dark red on the following chart) throughout all 16 markets.

“Local publishers have real audiences—the people who live and work in the communities and consume the content they create,” explained Fou. “Marketers need to understand the risks of ad fraud in geotargeted campaigns and consider spending their ad budgets directly with local publishers to avoid those risks.”

What can publishers do?

Legitimate local publishers work hard to create quality content that attracts real human audiences. Publishers who can prove that they have quality, human audiences will be the winners as marketers look to reward those who proactively combat fraud.

Knowledge is power. As more money is spent to reach local audiences, publishers must pay attention to how ad fraud is occurring in their markets and demonstrate that their sites are safe places for advertisers. Understanding how ad fraud occurs and explaining to marketers the issues that make them vulnerable is an important first step, but more action must be taken.

Here are a few steps publishers can take to bring us closer to minimizing ad fraud in the buying/selling process:
1. Follow Best Practices

Know your business practices for monetizing your site, sourcing traffic and choosing vendors, and educate your staff on best practices. Steps to providing transparency include implementing Ads.txt and having a third-party audit.

2. Use Accredited Vendors

Implement tech to prohibit ads from being served to known bots.

3. Actively Manage Media Monetization

Dedicate staff to review traffic patterns and sources.

4. Understand Traffic Sources

Revisit and scrutinize current traffic sourcing practices.

If you want to learn more about what you can do to help, download the AAM white paper Three Truths to Confront the Digital Ad Fraud Crisis. By looking deeper into ad fraud and how transactions take place within the ecosystem, it’s clear that ad fraud – on both national and local levels – is conquerable.

Advertising | Perspectives

Demand for media quality is a challenge and an opportunity

It’s hard to deny that the landscape for digital publishers is a challenging one. Pools of advertising revenue are shrinking, competition is at an all-time high. A variety of strategic pivots — from video to subscription models revenue models — have yet to fully mature. Furthermore, traditional advertising models are strained by a buy-side that increasingly demands that publishers hit ever more stringent media quality targets. In short, it’s an environment where every penny counts, and where it’s essential that premium publishers maximize the value of their inventory. For many, that means employing tools that can curb factors like ad fraud and low viewability, which can erode the value of premium content.

Fraud

Ad fraud is often positioned as a buy-side problem. Fraudsters use a variety of techniques, from bot networks that generate artificial traffic, to domain spoofing tactics that allow them to impersonate premium publishers. For buyers, it means stolen ad dollars that never impact consumers, and for publishers, it means an obvious loss of revenue. However, ad fraud has a more insidious impact on digital publishers. Not only does it erode the revenue bottom line, but it also erodes trust. The loss of trust damages long-term relationships and reshapes the way major advertisers apportion their budgets over time.

Recently, a digital publisher serving the technology, healthcare, and financial sector experienced an unexpected spike in bot activity. The spike prompted advertisers to question the validity of the publisher’s inventory and could have led to a breakdown in trust and, ultimately, a loss of significant revenue. To combat this, the publisher in question employed a fraud optimization solution to isolate and sequester invalid traffic at the ad server level, reducing fraud across their inventory by over 78%.

Viewability

Like fraud, non-viewable inventory has an unparalleled ability to erode value for publishers. Pressure from major brand advertisers — including highly publicized ultimatums from Unilever CMO Keith Weed, P&G’s Marc Pritchard, and media buying giant Group M — have moved viewable inventory from a nice-to-have in digital advertising inventory, to table stakes for many of the worlds top advertisers. Publishers who find themselves unable to deliver highly viewable inventory may find themselves missing out on significant revenue.

However, demand for highly viewable inventory also presents an opportunity. Publishers who can meet higher viewability standards stand to earn a premium on that inventory given high demand. Recognizing this potential for untapped revenue, a pop culture publisher recently sought to increase viewability across its inventory. Using a publisher optimization solution, the publisher was able to substantially raise viewability from a baseline of 53% to 77.3%, easily hitting a 70% viewability threshold on all of its inventory, opening the door to premium advertiser dollars.

Moving forward

As publishers are increasingly challenged to adapt their business model to a changing ecosystem, it’s easy to feel that rising media quality standards are just one more pressure point. In reality, with the right tools in hand, growing advertiser demand for improved media quality presents an untapped opportunity. Publishers who are able to meet demand can grow trust and more importantly, tap unrealized revenue on high-quality inventory to support their premium content.

Perspectives | Revenue

Publishers: Focus on fraud

I’m going to start by saying something that really shouldn’t shock you. Digital ad fraud is a crime. The word fraud is right there in the name. Fraudsters, whether they’re using sophisticated bot networks or deceptive spoofing tactics, are stealing money from advertisers. Yet the digital advertising industry has historically treated fraud as, at best,  the cost of doing business or, at worst, a budget-sapping nuisance. But if the headlines are to be believed, that’s changing fast and publishers need to take steps to clean house if they want to be sure they’re protected.

Over the last few months, we’ve all seen signs that public officials are taking a renewed interest in the digital media ecosystem. While Congress has been busy trying to figure out Facebook, the New York district attorney’s office recently launched an inquiry into the business practices of Newsweek owner IBT media, saw the company’s offices raided and their servers seized. Though that investigation was wide-ranging, ad fraud was significant component.

The investigation may be part of a wider trend. FBI investigators recently attended the Rubicon Projects Executive Exchange conference where Special Agent Evelina Aslanyan reportedly told ad industry executives that ad fraud “represents a whole new world of crime for publishers and consumers.” The appearance suggests that the bureau is gearing up for a push on cybercrime and that ad fraud will now fall firmly in that category.

While fraud is often framed as a challenge for advertisers, it’s possible for even legitimate publishers to unwittingly become entangled with ad fraud. There are a handful of steps publishers can take avoiding being caught up in the wave.

Avoid traffic-sourcing schemes

It’s not uncommon for publishers to “buy traffic” in order to deliver on impression quotes and meet their obligations to advertising partners. There’s nothing inherently wrong with employing third-party services to extend or increase the audience for your content, especially if that additional audience is human and comes from a legitimate marketing activity like sponsored posts or content recommendation services.

However, some vendors who offer additional traffic can’t deliver human eyes. Instead, the impressions they deliver are from bots. It’s this kind of invalid traffic that can leave publishers in hot water with advertisers and the authorities. Thoroughly vetting traffic vendors is the best way to avoid paying for fake views or even inadvertently charging for them.

Employ a verification solution

Verification isn’t just for the buy-side. Advertisers employ verification solutions to identify, and in some cases block ads from serving on invalid or non-human impressions. For publishers inadvertently receiving fake traffic. this can be a headache requiring refunds or campaign extensions to meet impression goals with legitimate traffic. However, verification cuts both ways and ad fraud detection solutions can help publishers to clean up their inventory and supply chain.

Additionally, publishers can use verification technology to detect fraud on their own sites and pages. Verification technology can help publishers with vet traffic vendors and ensure that none of the traffic they’re serving to advertisers is invalid. Sell-side verification technology gives publishers greater transparency into the quality of their inventory allowing them to make more accurate projections of its value.

Automate optimization

Sell-side verification solutions have been available to for over a decade. They allow publishers to assess their inventory and identify potential invalid traffic before exposing it to ad impressions. However, the process of cleaning up that inventory can be time-consuming and costly.

Automated optimization gives publishers a way to remove fraud from their deliverable ad inventory. Optimization solutions integrate directly into publisher ad servers which allow them to redirect fraudulent audiences to house ads. This prevents bots from collecting cookies and carrying them to other websites and provides an added layer of protection against inadvertent fraudulent traffic from unscrupulous vendors.

The takeaway

The focus on fraud isn’t likely to let up anytime soon. While publishers may feel some added pressure to deliver fraud-free impressions, this also represents a huge opportunity for premium publishers to capitalize on quality inventory. By taking a few simple steps to ensure that your inventory, as well as your traffic generation solutions, are safe and fraud-free publishers have the potential to score ad revenue worthy of their quality inventory.

Advertising | Innovation | Perspectives

Digital can change for the better, viewability is the proof

It’s hard to see change when you’re in the moment. Progress is something that’s best observed in hindsight. It’s easy to let the challenges of the day grab your focus. Going the next few feet often feels more important than miles you’ve already come. I think about this often when I look back on the changes that have taken place in our industry over the last four years.

Viewability has been completely overhauled. It wasn’t so long ago that even the most hard-nosed media buyers were resigned to the idea that 30% of their ads were destined to be below-the-fold, partially loaded– in effect, unviewable. Today those numbers have improved dramatically. Even the least demanding buyers know that they can get to 60% viewability, and with the right tools and solutions in place 100% viewability is within reach. In retrospect, it seems crazy that we ever accepted anything less.

What’s going on

You can tell the same story about fraud. Just a few years ago the conventional wisdom held that fraud levels of 30% (or or even 50%) were an unavoidable. To reach real people, you had to go to through a mountain of bots. It was the cost of doing business, and an “unofficial tax” on digital advertisers. But that was before the industry reset its thinking about what is actually possible. Today, thanks to advances in fraud detection, most advertisers would consider a fraud threshold of just 2% to be the upper threshold of what is acceptable.

Today, “fraud free,” “viewable only,” and “100% brand safe” are all commonplace. These would have seemed out of reach for advertisers just a few years ago. And those aren’t just slogans, they’re promises with meaningful business implications.

Why it matters

There’s a tendency to get lost in the weeds, or to think about metrics as goals unto themselves. As focused as we are on reducing fraud, improving viewability, or protecting brands those things aren’t really the end goal. A more viewable ad ecosystem means cost savings for advertisers, more efficient CPMs, and better ROI for your marketing dollars.

When we accepted that only 50% of our ad buys were reliably fraud free we were accepting that we might be throwing away about half the money we spend in digital. Half of an advertisers million dollar ad buy could go to waste. For publishers that meant half a million dollars going into the pockets of fraudsters instead of into their revenue column. A healthier ecosystem means better business opportunities for everyone.

What’s next?

The work of cleaning up the digital advertising industry is just beginning. We’ve made great strides in desktop environments, but the conversation is already moving with the audiences as well. New platforms like mobile in-app, proprietary platforms, and over-the-top video all face challenges of their own. But those challenges shouldn’t deter us. Instead we should look back at the incredible progress we’ve made and realize that that same kind of transformation is possible in every new environment.

Advertisers and publishers can continue to carve out big opportunities on mobile, video, and social the same way they have on desktop. That’s why we believe that the work we do is so important. We want to encourage everyone to keep rethinking what they’re willing to accept from the digital ecosystem. It’s the only way to keep improving value, effectiveness, and revenue to move digital forward.

Harmon joined Integral Ad Science in 2013 to support the company’s accelerated growth and demand for its media quality solutions. In his role, Harmon is responsible for strategic partnerships and integrations of Integral’s digital technology solutions with both publishers and platforms.

Harmon is a veteran of the online media industry, leading and mentoring teams on both the publisher and agency side of the business.  He is a frequent speaker and writer in the digital advertising community and is an advocate of both the art and science of digital marketing.

Uncategorized

Bots don’t care about ad fraud, but they cause it

Ad Fraud is a popular topic of discussion in the digital advertising world today. Criminals set up networks of fake sites, create bots to drive a large number of phony impressions, and exploit the programmatic ecosystem to make money from ads that no one sees. To combat such nefarious activity, advertisers and agencies require some form of invalid traffic verification to filter out bot traffic.

But you run a reputable site. You don’t use bots to inflate your impression numbers. So, why are verification companies reporting that a percentage of your traffic is generated by bots, costing you money and hurting your reputation with advertisers in the process?

The truth is that intentional ad fraud is only a portion of the problem. Most bots were created for a purpose unrelated to advertising. But they have huge unintended consequences for the industry.

Verification Companies Get It Wrong

A verification company’s primary role is to make sure an ad ran where it was supposed to. They check for viewability, ensure multiple ads aren’t loading on top of each other, protect brand safety, and a host of other things. Identifying bots is not at the core of their business. In fact, they’ve only recently started to address it. As a result, they use rudimentary detection methods, like IP and domain blacklisting. But those methods just don’t work anymore.

Criminals are smart, and as verification methods have improved, they have become more sophisticated. In 2017, 74% of bots were Advanced Persistent Bots that cycle through IP addresses and switch user agents. They accomplish this by using malware to hijack legitimate devices. When a user installs an irreputable browser plugin, he or she could initiate bot activity in the background that results in their device being added to a blacklist. Worse yet, this blacklisting will remain even after the user removes the malware from their device. That human user may never see another one of your ads.

You Have Bots on Your Site and Don’t Want Them There

Ad fraud is only one of many reasons the bad guys create bots. In fact, last year more than 42% of all internet traffic came from bots, and most bots are not involved in ad fraud. If you create content, chances are someone has written a web scraping bot to steal that content from you and monetize it for themselves. Sites that have a paywall are an even bigger target.

If your visitors log into an account, hackers want to steal those login credentials so they can sell them on the black market. They also want to use your site to test the validity of credentials they may have stolen or purchased elsewhere. On average, sites face login attacks two to three times per week. But after a data breach, like ones we’ve seen recently from Best Buy, Lord and Taylor, and Panera, that number triples.

Ad fraud bots will visit your site to pick up one of your cookies, making them appear more real and less suspicious. A rich history of cookies with intent data also makes them more targetable, and thus more valuable. None of these bots care about generating an impression on your site, but if you don’t take measures to prevent it, you will unwittingly show them an impression.

Bots aren’t just wasting your advertisers’ money, they’re hurting your bottom line as well. While bots can watch videos and click on ads, sometimes on purpose and other times as an unintended consequence, they don’t ever convert or make real purchases. Filtering bot impressions produces higher click-through rates, increasing campaign conversions. The same applies to your audience segments as well. When your inventory performs better, advertisers buy it more often.

You Can Do Something About It

You have a bot problem. Every website does. Bots are stealing your content, hurting your relationship with advertisers, making your campaigns perform worse, and siphoning ad dollars away from you. A post-campaign report does nothing to help you with any of these problems. It’s frustrating, but there are a few things you can do right now to stop bots before they hit your site:

Block outdated user agents and browsers

Many bot tools have default configurations that contain outdated user-agent string lists. This step won’t stop the more advanced attackers, but it might catch and discourage some. And the risk here is very low. Most modern browsers force auto-updates on users, making it more difficult for real users to browse using an outdated version.

Monitor your traffic sources carefully

Do any have high bounce rates? Do you see lower conversion rates from certain traffic sources? These can be signs that a source is sending you bot traffic. Buying traffic or using audience extension platforms only exacerbates the problem. If you are incentivizing someone to send you large volumes of traffic, chances are they are going to game the system, often using bots. Avoid them if you can.

Get help

Bots mitigation is an arms race. As long as the incentives and potential rewards are great, fraudsters and hackers will keep innovating to create new bots that get past whatever measures you put in place. You aren’t in the business of catching bots, and you just can’t keep up on your own. A third party expert on bot mitigation will help you stay ahead of the bad guys, and also help you push back on false positives from verification companies.

Reid Tatoris is VP Product Outreach and Marketing at Distil Networks. Reid was previously the co-founder of Are You A Human, a Detroit-based company that analyzes how real humans interact with the Internet. Prior to starting Are You a Human, Reid was a technology consulting working in strategic roles and leading development teams. Reid holds both an Engineering Degree and an MBA from the University of Michigan and is a mentor for Techstars Mobility.

Revenue

The four types of domain spoofing

“More than $1m lost in revenue due to domain spoofing,” “FT warns advertisers after discovering high levels of domain spoofing,” “Domain spoofing remains a huge threat to programmatic.” These are just a handful of the dire headlines you’ve probably seen scrolling through your feed in the past year blaring warnings about the rising threat of an insidious form of ad fraud called domain spoofing. If, after reading a few of these, you’re tempted to hide under your desk, we won’t blame you. After all, most outlets focus on the massive costs and increasingly common occurrence of domain spoofing without really unpacking what it is, how it’s accomplished, and how it can be addressed.

The simple definition of domain spoofing, “a practice through which fraudsters pass off low quality inventory as a high-quality or premium site” is a useful crutch for explaining the basic concept, but it doesn’t really explain the method. Domain spoofing isn’t monolithic. This type of fraud actually falls into four main categories, two of which are fairly simple and two of which that are more sophisticated. Let’s break it down:

Simple Domain Spoofing

1. URL Substitution

How it works: The simplest form of domain spoofing is also the easiest to detect. Fraudsters deceive the advertisers at bid time by substituting a fake URL through the exchange or ad network that’s hosting the auction. In this instance, fraudsters aren’t actually doing much to cover their tracks. The ad is going to serve on a different site than the one you bid on.

How to stop it: Fraudsters engaged in this form of domain spoofing are relying on advertisers not to check their work. Reconciling bids with reported impressions will quickly reveal discrepancies. However, for high volume advertisers, that kind of manual reconciliation can’t always happen efficiently. By sharing data with a third-party verification service such as IAS it is possible to detect ads running on any unapproved URLs which will reliably detect and report this type of spoofing.

2. Cross-domain embedding

How it works: Fraudsters pair together two sites, one with high traffic and low quality content and another with low traffic and totally safe content. Using a custom IFrame they are able to open an ad-sized version of the safe site within the unsafe site, exposing the ad to that site’s higher traffic volume. This tactic is favored by publishers who own sites containing unfavorable material like pornography, fake news, or hate speech communities, all of which can attract large amounts of traffic but are difficult to monetize with traditional brands. Operators either partner with low-traffic sites in a profit sharing arrangement or simply operate the low-traffic site themselves as a front.

How to stop it: Unfortunately, manual reconciliation isn’t likely to catch this type of spoofing since the ad is actually being served to a safe site which is then being opened within an unsafe environment. However, a third-party verification partner can tell where the user’s browser actually is and compare that URL to the URL to which the ad was served, thus identifying this type of spoofing.

Complex Domain Spoofing

1. Custom Browsers

How it works: Using a custom browser, bots can visit any site on the internet, including sites that aren’t reachable using commercial browsers. These bots can make the URL of the site that a user is visiting appear to be a different, seemingly premium site. So when an ad reads the URL from the browser it will be served on, it reports back the spoofed URL.

How to stop it: The flexibility of these bot driven custom browsers provides the foundation for their undoing. For example, IAS verification and measurement solutions can single out and block this type of activity with our browser and device matching technology which helps us to identify non-human browsers.

2. Human browsers

How it works: This type of domain spoofing is similar to common forms of adware. When a human browser visits a premium site on an infected machine, malware will inject an ad inside the page. Operators of premium sites aren’t paid for these injected ads. Instead, fraudsters collect the revenue.

How to stop it: This type of fraud is difficult to detect on the page. Currently, solutions like ads.txt can provide some relief by offering greater control over the way ads are transacted upon and exchanged. However, because these browsers are able to visit normally non-dibrowsable sites it’s possible to detect this type of activity by looking for reported URLs that match sites that a human browser could not visit.

The Diagnosis

Domain spoofing presents a unique challenge for the buy and sell-side alike. Whether it’s committed through simple dishonesty at the bid level or through more complex means involving malware, the cost in both industry trust and advertising dollars – equal to nearly $16.4 billion in 2017 – is significant. Verification technology can help to eliminate or mitigate these executions of domain spoofing, but the underlying cause also needs to be addressed.

The fundamental challenge of domain spoofing is that individuals are able to offer inventory to which they have no right. The practice of reselling vastly expands the lists of individuals approved to trade the impressions of premium brands making it easier to obscure this type of fraud. As we continue to mitigate this type of fraud at the technical level there is also a need for greater controls at the market level to put a stop to these transactions on a more permanent basis.

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