Ad fraud: The Imitation Game
Despite some high-profile commitments from agency trading desks to ‘eradicate’ ad fraud, Marco Ricci, CEO of Adloox, says industry is being deceived.
This week saw the release of The Imitation Game, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing – the man who famously unlocked the potential of computing machines to decode critical German Naval activity during the Second World War.
It is also a film about lies, deceit and hidden truths behind the mask of deception; a shockingly accurate summary of the world of online display and real-time bidding (RTB) right now?
In my last opinion article on Newsline I discussed the so-called ‘fraud Transformers’ – which include ‘Deceptibots’ able to masquerade themselves as premium inventory on the programmatic marketplace. RTB digital is a $12 billion industry, but online fraud is worth the same.
On an average RTB campaign, around 40% of the advertising is consistently running on either fake, non-human bot websites or on virus-infected ‘non-viewable’ content. This problem is not going away. It is also not over-inflated scaremongering by verification companies trying to make a quick buck, as many agency trading desk (ATD) managers are claiming. If it was, why would two of these companies be so keen on a high profile ‘born in the USA’ handshake with AppNexus?
I think the inherent problem, from top to bottom, is this: UK Advertisers are relying on their ATD to keep them brand-safe. This is charged as part of a total ‘ad serving cost’.
ATDs employ, more often than not, a large, well-known US verification company that is contracted to stop the fraud and block the clients’ ads from appearing on all inappropriate websites.
They ‘should’ scour the websites and sellers available to target against on the DSP platforms, and just like Alan Turing this verification company should be able to hone in on every instance of deception, confirming which sites are the imitators, and which are premium sites telling the truth – saving the client lots of wasted money. But is it working?
I guess if it was working, AppNexus would not have come under fire over the last few weeks for so many instances of fraudulent domains available to buy on their platform, and thus have hurriedly announced an ‘Industry-first certified supply program’ to eradicate fraud.
Eradicate: verb, destroy completely; put an end to. This is laughably and delusional.
There are two infamous domains that have been available to buy on DSP platforms for over a year now: Quikdisplay and Tractionize. Both are often in the top 20 highest volume delivery sites across RTB campaigns. Both are always sold as ‘good inventory’, and are always being bought by agencies. The reality is they are both serious cases of fraud.
As online security site, Malware Tips, notes: “[tractionize.com] is designed specifically to make money. It generates web traffic, collects sales leads for other dubious sites, and will display advertisements and sponsored links within your web browser.”
Worryingly, despite being categorised as such, and blacklisted for over a year, the DSPs are still turning a blind eye and keeping the sites in their bidding exchanges. There are literally thousands of other examples of this – and anyone who wants further evidence should get in touch.
Image from adloox’s verification software showing well-known fraudulent domains – Quikdisplay and Tractionize – sitting within the AppNexus bidding pool, dated 11 November 2014. The ‘NY’ indicates the New York location.
The reason they have not been ‘destroyed completely’ is because verification companies are not always spotting them – a big red flag, surely? – and after which the agencies are not forcing their DSP and exchange partners to weed them out for good. So I take this ‘groundbreaking’ AppNexus announcement with a pinch of salt.
It puzzles me why so much has been slipping through the net for so long. Apart from the obvious financial gain (versus the financial wastage for the client), why is there no collective transparency across the RTB marketplace, and why are there so many negligent mistakes?
Perhaps DSPs like AppNexus should run regular MOTs across the sellers who have seats on their platform – and deploy hygiene checks on audiences with out-of-date browser settings and blacklisted named and shamed, notorious fraud domains?
Also, why are DSPs not sharing fraudster lists amongst themselves?
There are some companies out there that are pushing for this, of which Adloox is one; independent and agnostically calling for deeper auditing and transparency.
“It’s important to know how deep the rabbit hole goes, and how far down the fraudsters are hiding”.
Marco Ricci is CEO of Adloox. All views expressed here are his, and not those of MediaTel Newsline.