Ad Fraud 101 GUIDE

Get educated on how the pro’s are dealing with digital ad fraud

3 actionable steps that advertisers and publishers can take to prevent ad fraud

Learn how to avoid ad fraud related bad PR to handle brand safety issues with ease

WHAT IS AD FRAUD?

We define online ad fraud as the deliberate act of exploiting an advertiser’s online budget without providing any value added service in return.

WHY IS THERE A CONFUSION ABOUT THE DEFINITION OF AD FRAUD?As Ryan Joe from Adexchanger said:

“There’s disagreement on whether bad

media placements constitutes fraud. For

instance, a video ad running above the

fold in a muted 1x1 iframe, or banners

stacked on top of each other like playing

cards could all technically be shown to a

human audience, even though there’s no

chance anyone will see those ad units.

Consequently, some industry players

might argue that’s simply bad media

placement. Others feel that’s a clear

example of fraud. Others believe no

distinction needs to be made since in both

instances, the advertiser did not get what

it paid for and therefore was defrauded.”

It brings us back to the word “deliberate”

in our definition which does not know clear

boundaries, but gives us a moral guideline

by which to interpret possible fraud cases.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT AD FRAUD?

It is deliberate action aimed against your campaign

It is eating up your ad budget without providing value

It is lowering the ROI on your campaigns

It diminishes the reputation of your brand

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HOW BAD IS THE SITUATION?

In 2015 the Association of National Advertisers

(ANA) and ad fraud solutions provider White Ops

collaborated on a 60-day study looking at the

severity of bots (one kind of ad fraud). The

study tracked 181 campaigns among 36 ANA

members (including Walmart, Johnson &

Johnson and Kimberly-Clark) and determined

that bots cause 23% of all video impressions, 11%

of display ads and would account for $6.3 billion

in losses in 2015.

In 2015 bots caused:

It is projected that in 2016ad fraud will cost advertisers

$7.2 billionglobally

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WHAT KIND OF AD FRAUD METHODS ARE OUT THERE?

As ad fraud detection methods become

better fraudsters come up with new

methods of mimicking traffic.

The aim is always the same: tapping the online

marketing budget of the advertiser. The perpetrators

may have different motives doing so, from simple

money gain to damaging reputation or crippling

competition. MOST COMMON FRAUD TYPES

1- Impression (CPM) Ad Fraud

- Hidden ad impressionsa) Ads stacked up

b) Ads hidden behind a picture

c) Ads hidden in a small frame (i.e. 1x1

pixel frame)

- Fake sites· Fake site passing on ad code – embed ad

code in another site via iFrame

· Websites copying content from other

sites - no own content

- Ad re-targeting fraud

- Ads outside viewable space (i.e. below the

footer)

- Video ads automatically playing belowmain screen

- Websites that reload ads continuouslywithout user action

- Websites that show the same ad manytimes next to each other or that havemassive amount of ads on the website

2- Search (CPC) Ad Fraud

- Fraudulent brand bidding

- Ad hijacking

3- Domain Spoofing

- URL spoofing – fraudsters pretending tobe a different URL

- Websites that embed other websites toincrease their traffic

4- Conversion Fraud

- Cookie Stuffing

5- Ad Injection and AdWare Fraud

- Malicious Toolbars

- Consumers accidentally installing malware on their devices

- Fraudsters modifying codes in the ad tags

6- Content management system(CMS) Fraud

7- Traffic Fraud (AudienceExtension Fraud)

- Bot and machine traffic

- Surfbar traffic

- Routing traffic

- Traffic exchange

- Banner exchange

WHY DOES AD FRAUD HAPPEN?Digital advertising can be looked at as a

variation of a typical wholesaler / distributer /

customer relationship. When it comes to an

industry where goods are involved, those in

the chain of commerce see, handle, and

inspect what is being exchanged. Ad

deliveries in programmatic media buying,

however, are determined by what

computers are communicating to each

other and not necessarily what the advertiser

is anticipating. The advertiser does not have

an easy method to verify and inspect the

clicks or impressions being purchased. This

opens the door for fraudsters to fake referrer

URLs, embed ads via iframe into other sites,

insert pop-under ads or pixel sized ads never

seen and many other techniques. It has

become extremely complex for advertisers

and ad suppliers let alone to truly understand

what is going on with their ads.

We are also aware that by compiling this list

we focus on ways the advertisers can be

defrauded, screening out ways by which

advertisers might want to defraud the user,

i.e. by means of malware.

We are aware that this list is by

no means conclusive and will

build it out in future versions.

WHY ISN’T THE AD INDUSTRY STOPPING THIS?

The answer comes down to money and responsibility.

It costs a lot of money to police hundreds of thousands of publishers and

advertisements. Also, it is almost self defeating for the ad suppliers to police

the system because of the inherent conflict of interest. This means that

the more fraud discovered by the intermediaries, the less money they

make. Clearly a system offering full transparency is vital to measuring the

true extent of ad fraud happening along the daisy chain of programmatic

media buying.

THE MOST DANGEROUS EFFECT OF AD FRAUD – BRAND SAFETY

Most ad fraud methods named above are targeting an

advertiser’s ad budget.

The issue companies need to not forget is: brand safety.

As a company your brand is the most valuable asset

that you possess. It needs to be maintained and

developed and can be damaged rather easily and swiftly.

You might wonder how that happens. Think of a harmless blog page talking about a

tropical island and its many advantages. No

harm in putting ads there for the dreamful

reader. What you don’t know is that the site

is a front and embeds your ad on another

site, a porn site. Sounds crazy? Put

yourself in the shoes of the porn website

operator. You know that you will not get any

serious ad revenue as your site will land on

people’s blacklist soon after initiation. So why

not create one or two webpages that serve as

a front and pass on ads to your site. Buy some

traffic to show that they are legitimate and you

are off to a good start…. to the detriment of

the affected advertisers that will have their ads

displayed on a porn page.

The UK arm of the IAB reflected in 2015 that

over a dozen household names were faced

with ads discovered on unsavory sites

devoted to paedophilia, incest, bestiality and

racism. “If there is one thing sure to dent your

brand reputation, that’s probably it”, they

concluded.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PREVENT AD FRAUD AND KEEP YOUR BRAND SAFE?

The simplest answer to ad fraud would be

focus on premium sites/publishers and

traffic from limited countries, regions even,

to minimize likelihood of unruly traffic.

Following this approach will mean putting

natural brand protect boundaries, with the

main downside left on the commercial side in

case of bot traffic. For all performance

campaigns this will not take you very far

though. In this case you will have to

consider leveraging brand safety and ad

fraud protection providers.

Everyone likes to push responsibility for ad fraud protection down the

ad chain. The advertiser passes accountability to the agency, the agency

to the ad network, the ad network to the SSP, the SSP to the website.

WHAT KIND OF AD FRAUD AND BRAND SAFETY TOOLS ARE THERE?

Tag based brand safety tools are what

major companies like Integral ads and

DoubleVerify are offering. They are part of

the ad delivery process, trying to read

referrers and blocking deliveries when

websites are associated with porn, violence

and other unsavory environments. This only

works when they know if the website is

illicit. In a world where websites spring up

every day this is hard to keep up with; so

your ad might end up showing on dodgy

websites after all. Even worse, in many cases

the ad delivery is going through so many

frames that the system will lose track and

will not be able to read the final referrer of

the journey.

There are two major technologies when it comes to brand safety:

crawler based and tag based protection.

Crawler based brand safety tools, like

checkmyads.com, come from the “other

side”. They screen the illicit environments

themselves and analyze dodgy ad delivery

chains to identify websites that serve as front.

When they see an ad on an unsavory site they

trace back the entire ad delivery chain and

make it transparent in order to put an end

to any weak links that have gone

unnoticed. This will enable you to cut shady

suppliers and add the right websites to

your blacklist.

Now you can get the checkmyads.com platform for free

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Crawler based technology

Crawler always identifies correct website-URL

Sees through all iframes and is therefore fake-proof

Detects which parties are involved

Low cost

Does not influence website-speed

Only periodic checks and no preventitive impact

No ads are actually blocked

BEST PRACTICE: to use both simultaneously

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Tag-based Protection

Prevents ads from actually being displayed

Possible to be combined with other checks (e.g. Geo, Browser-Version, Time...)

Low rate of detecting the correct URL (varies between 5-70%)

High costs for servers and datacenters

Using tags will slow down website-speed

Increases counting discrepancies between publisher and advertiser

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Start asking questions from your ad serving partners

What’s their method of combatting the different types of ad fraud?

Are they sharing with you what kind of fraudulent activities happened in your ad

campaigns? Will they work with you to reach full transparency?

When you show them exactly which supplier you don’t want to work with

(because you will be able to pinpoint fraudsters with checkmyads.com) will they

cut them?

When you find brand safety issues how will they correct them?

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3 step action plan for buyers

Use bot detection and monitor all traffic with a consistent

third party tool

Control for ad injection in programmatic

Concentrate ads during audience waking hours and reduce

buys on older browsers

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3 step action plan for publishers

Always monitor sourced traffic

Use domain detection or bot detection services to protect against content

theft and ad injection

Allow third party monitoring and tracking

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checkmyads.comyour reliable brand safety tool

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Sources: Adexchanger, iab UK, Adloc

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