To do this, the 404 bot uses unverified Ads.txt files - the very tool that is supposed to help ad buyers avoid fraudulent ad sellers and prevent the unauthorized sale of ad inventory. The 404 bot has already been able to bypass many preventative techniques and ensure that the fake URLs fall off the radar. Thus, this new bot scam once again demonstrates how sophisticated the latest ad fraud techniques are constantly evolving - and in doing so, also undermining industry-created security methods. To date, approximately 1.5 billion video ads have been affected by the 404 bot. IAS estimates that it has already cost the industry more than $15 million - and counting.

The 404 bot has already attacked quite a number of publisher domains. Many of them have one thing in particular in common: long Ads.txt lists. In response to the rise of fake ad inventory, the IAB Technology Lab launched the Authorized Digital Sellers initiative, known as Ads.txt, a few years ago to increase transparency of inventory flow in the online advertising ecosystem. With success, past implementation of Ads.txt by publishers has resulted in a dramatic decrease in fraud. However, for some time now, unchecked Ads.txt files that are no longer up to date have been causing an increase in ad fraud.

Continuous testing and updating required

"The 404 bot has been active since 2018. Its uncontrolled growth requires industry action," said Evgeny Shmelkov, head of the IAS Threat Lab. "Publishers have done a great job implementing Ads.txt. But this new bot shows us one thing above all: for successful ad fraud defense, it is crucial to continuously check and update Ads.txt files."

"Combating ad fraud is a constant arms race," said Oliver Hülse, Managing Director CEE at IAS. "Fraudsters' methods are becoming increasingly sophisticated and new bot networks are emerging almost daily to scam advertisers' advertising budgets. The 404 bot is a particularly sophisticated candidate that uses unverified Ads.txt files to its advantage. Stamping out this dangerous scam must therefore be part of the collective task of all members of the digital ecosystem."

Domain spoofing

Similar to 3eve and Hyphbot, the 404 bot relies on extensive domain spoofing, where URLs are faked at the browser level. This means that the data from the browsers is also faked. To avoid the vulnerabilities pointed out by previous bots, the 404 bot ensures that the spoofed URLs are difficult for the human eye to detect.

Although the IAS Threat Lab regularly detects bots, IAS refrains from publishing details for each discovery to avoid unnecessary panic in the ecosystem. However, since there is no indication that 404 bots will be shut down for good, the Threat Lab will publish its research findings in the future to allow the industry to clean up its act.

So far, Tiktok has hardly been used by destination brands. The primary aim is therefore to gather initial experience, Hefti told the AWP news agency on the fringes of the media conference. What is particularly exciting about Tiktok is that a large reach can be achieved organically. Established social media such as Facebook, on the other hand, have developed into pay channels.

On Facebook, for example, Switzerland Tourism organically reaches only a "low single-digit percentage" of its own fans. By contrast, Switzerland Tourism's most successful Tiktok video was viewed more than 700,000 times without an advertising budget.

"TikToker" wanted

Just two weeks ago, the industry organization announced that it was looking for four "tiktokers" to create video contributions for Switzerland Tourism. In the meantime, applications in the "high double-digit range" have already been received. These tiktokers will be deployed from mid-April, Hefti said.

Established in the Arab region

Following the initial successes, Switzerland Tourism will open a second Tiktok account in Arabic in a few days. In the Arabic region, the platform has already established itself as a medium for travel content. If the success continues, further accounts could follow. (SDA)

"Arosa is a pioneer and already shows with the Arosa Bärenland how animal welfare and tourism work together in an exemplary way. This advertising ban is a logical next step on this path," says Pascal Jenny, tourism director of Arosa, explaining the decision.

The animal welfare organization Vier Pfoten welcomes this step: "It really is a forward-looking message that Arosa no longer allows any advertising for fur products. Hopefully many Swiss tourism destinations and communities will follow this example. Arosa advertises sustainable tourism and impressively shows that it is putting its money where its mouth is," says a delighted Alexandra Mandoki, country director of Vier Pfoten Schweiz. According to the organization, the decision shows that ethical fashion and animal welfare have also gained enormous importance in tourism. Instead of real fur animal cruelty, modern consumers today also want sustainability and innovation in this area.

Every year, more than 100 million animals are killed by the fur industry. Mink, foxes and tanuki suffer in tiny wire cages on fur farms, while other species die a cruel death in traps. High amounts of dangerous chemicals are used to process fur into fur fashions. Vier Pfoten has been working internationally on the issue of fur for many years and is campaigning in Switzerland for a ban on the import of fur products.

The agency is convinced that bees and biodiversity need to be supported and promoted. Around 600 bee species in Switzerland are threatened, and with them 130 crops and useful plants.

That is why Numéro10 has decided to make a small contribution. The agency members are currently in training as beekeepers. In the spring, they will install three hives, including an experimental wooden hive that is 100 percent ecological, lets nature do its work without intervention and respects the ecosystem. The joint project is also intended to promote team spirit.

The agency is located in a green zone where there are fields, flowers, forest and streams - an ideal environment for bees. The preparations for the project can be followed on Numéro10's Instagram and Facebook accounts.

Launching four trucks at once is a huge deal in the truck industry. To ensure that this fact is also reflected in communication, Volvo has come up with something big.

The film takes place in a gloomy, rainy setting. From afar, the lights of the truck tower can be seen driving through the night. As time passes, the epic hum of the song "Conquest Of Paradise" by Vangelis drowns out the sound of the rain. As the commercial - and the song - reaches its climax, it becomes apparent that Roger Alm, the president of the Volvo Group himself, is standing on the vehicle with a billowing raincoat, flashing and thundering it - in Thor-like fashion - with his arms raised.

The film was released shortly before the official European launch of the truck fleet: "This is the biggest launch for Volvo so far. Although I am used to being at the forefront of things, the tower shoot was a rather unusual day at work," President Roger Alm is quoted as saying in a press release.

The film was shot at the end of 2019 at a test site outside Gothenburg. Both the truck tower and most of the visual effects were real. The preparations and safety precautions took about a month.

The Zurich-based agency has been responsible for the larger social media campaigns since 2018 and promotes the Mobility offering at branding and performance level. The focus is on needs-oriented user types that are to be addressed in a targeted manner and convinced of the company's mobility solutions.

SEA and programmatic advertising will now be integrated into the existing campaign setup, providing Mobility with holistic and strategic support. "We look forward to expanding our professional and successful collaboration to date and implementing a holistic approach," says Alex Vavourakis, Digital Marketing Manager at Mobility.

The individual phases of the user journey are covered from a single source: programmatic advertising and social media draw the attention of potential customers to Mobility offers based on specific topics and locations, while search ads pick up people who are already actively searching according to various interests and behaviors. SEO measures accompany the content and technical development of the website in order to achieve the highest possible visibility for Mobility.

"The even closer cooperation honors us and offers new opportunities to better exploit the potential of mobility thanks to cross-channel, data-based insights," says Christian Haueter, BlueGlass Interactive Head of Paid & Social Media.

The ÜberCreative Summit of the Serviceplan Group is taking place for the eighth time and for the first time in Switzerland. Over the course of two days, creative professionals from Tokyo, Europe and North and Central America will develop new ideas, discuss their current work, exchange views on the latest trends and discuss how they can turn brands into best brands. Alexander Schill, co-owner and global creative director of the Serviceplan agency group, launched the summit format in 2016 with the aim of bringing together creative minds from all over the world for a regular exchange of ideas.

At Serviceplan, the definition ÜberCreativity is intended to stand for the integrated collaboration of all experts in the houses of communication. "In the past, an exciting story was often enough to build a brand. Today, communication works very differently. Brand building has become a team sport, which is why it is important to tackle intercultural tasks," explains Raul Serrat, host of the ÜberCreative Summit and Executive Creative Director of Serviceplan Suisse. The event is a platform designed to promote team spirit and motivate people to challenge themselves.

In addition to keynote speeches, presentations of campaigns from the agency group and guided tours of museums, this year's supporting program also includes visits to local hotspots. And there will be work: In the brainstorming format "WigWam", a large number of ideas are to be created within a very short space of time. A method developed by Jason Romeyko, Executive Creative Director worldwide at the Serviceplan agency group

Jens Paul Berndt was most recently Deputy CEO at Homegate. Since 2016, as CTO, he has, among other things, significantly restructured and expanded the product engineering team and driven forward the reorganization of Homegate. Prior to that, he worked for the Scout24 Group in Berlin and Vienna in various roles. He studied medical informatics in Heilbronn. His successor in the position of Chief Technology Officer at Homegate will be announced in the coming weeks.

Nick McKittrick, co-founder and former CEO of the British real estate portal Rightmove, will join the Board of Directors of TX Markets. TX Markets is responsible for the entire Classifieds and Marketplaces portfolio of the TX Group. The other members of the Board of Directors of TX Markets are Terje Seljeseth (until the end of 2017 CEO Schibsted Classifieds Media and Chief Product Officer Schibsted) as well as Pietro Supino (President and Publisher), Andreas Schulthess (Member of the Board of Directors), Christoph Tonini (CEO until June 30, 2020), Samuel Hügli (Head of Technology & Ventures) and Sandro Macciacchini (Head of Finance & Human Resources).

In line with the concession mandate, the regional broadcasters would have covered regional aspects, Telesuisse and consulting firm Publicom announced Wednesday.

A survey showed that 48 percent of respondents used content from regional TV stations to find out about the elections. SRG TV stations were accessed by 84 percent. On election day, 1,765,000 people consumed the programs of regional stations. The study was already a topic in the Sunday press (Werbewoche.ch reported).

Important platform

In 60 percent of their election campaign coverage, regional stations focused on their regions, according to Publicom's program analysis - nominations and personal campaigns took place primarily at the cantonal level. At the SRG TV stations, 78 percent of the reports on the election campaign focused on the national level.

In terms of the quality of reporting, there were no significant differences between the regional TV stations and the SRG TV stations. While the audience rated SRG coverage as slightly better than that of the regional stations, political actors as a whole did not perceive any differences in terms of quality.

Representative voter survey

Online survey of political actors

The party staff surveyed considered the regional TV stations to be more important platforms in the election campaign. When it came to the actual election decision, however, newspapers were also the most important medium last year, according to the Publicom study. The national SRG stations were also very important, especially in Ticino.

Online survey of political actors

"Six percent massively too low"

The regional TV stations, on the other hand, would have had a similar importance in the election decision as the SRG radio stations or social media. Telesuisse called the study result "gratifying" in the release. The stations could provide a service for the region that the SRG could not, they argue.

The association recalls that all private broadcasters together received six percent of the revenue from radio and television reception fees, while 94 percent went to the SRG. "In view of the increasing importance of regional reporting and the crisis in the classic media, this six percent is massively too little," Telesuisse President André Moesch was quoted as saying.

Reservations about the study

The SRG expressed major reservations about the Telesuisse study, especially since it was non-transparent and questionable in terms of methodology. The SRG stations, together with the regional television stations, fulfill an important public service mission for this country, especially in elections, the SRG wrote in a statement.

Bakom also expressed reservations about the study on Twitter, among other things with regard to the presentation and in particular the contextualization of the results. It financed part of the study and thus enabled the inclusion of Italian-speaking Switzerland.

For the study presented in Bern on Wednesday, Publicom analyzed 22 broadcasters on six key dates. In addition, there was a survey of 748 voters, which Publicom describes as "representative of the population", and an online survey of party secretariats. Of 184 secretariats contacted, 73 answered the questions. (SDA/swi)

On the Informatiktage, companies, start-ups, universities and other hosts in the greater Zurich area offer insights into their everyday work and research. The Zurich agency won the bid after an evaluation.

In the radio spots, robot XH 733 and his colleagues invite people to the Information Days 2020. The spots convey that the robots are still not perfect and sometimes still have some trouble with intonation and pronunciation. However, the idea for this still comes from human creatives.

The Informatiktage is a project that emerged from the eZürich cooperation network. eZürich is a platform for people and projects that want to advance Zurich as an ICT location. It is coordinated by the city and canton of Zurich.

A balanced mix of analog and digital communication will prove its worth in the future, 96 percent of the survey participants agree, explains Lisa Patek, Marketing Manager at Marketagent.com. The survey polled 303 experts from the fields of marketing and communications. Around three quarters of respondents believe that companies cannot be successful in the long term without digital PR.

Awareness of the importance of a documented strategy for digital communications has increased. Whereas in a Trend Radar survey in 2017 more than half of the respondents said they were working without one, by 2020 the figure was only 21 percent.Trends in digital communication

Personalized content and offers represent the most significant trend in digital PR for 62 percent of respondents, followed by live videos (33 percent) and artificial intelligence (30 percent). When it comes to communication channels, Instagram is at the top: 62 percent expect the photo platform to become even more important in the future - YouTube (61 percent) and LinkedIn (53 percent) are also seen as having growing relevance for the PR industry.

The global mega-topic of artificial intelligence has already become part of everyday professional life for many domestic communications professionals. 34 percent use such algorithms for media monitoring, 28 percent for media analysis and about one fifth for automated data analysis.

The main advantages are seen as "facilitation of work" and "relief for employees". "More errors due to algorithms" and "Lack of quality of output" are the biggest challenges according to the survey. Half of the respondents do not yet use any tools or technologies based on artificial intelligence in their area of work.

More channels, more interaction

The results of the study were discussed by PR experts at the APA-Comm in Vienna on Tuesday. There were different assessments of the digital PR of today and tomorrow. "Classic PR is losing its business model," said Thomas Lutz, Head of Communication at Microsoft Austria. PR no longer consists of focusing only on media, he said. He has the approach of being his own medium, Lutz explained: "I have my own little portal and through that I control my content - I call it 'Amplified Media' - I try to amplify what I have as content, to spread it beyond social media into the most diverse channels."

Julia Wippersberg, Managing Director of APA-OTS, emphasized that PR is not an end in itself. It is never just about reaching the media, she said; communication must work for the company and contribute to increasing its value. "Image and reputation are ways to get there, but not the exclusive and ultimate goal of communication," Wippersberg affirmed. Digital channels have a key advantage, he said, because customers can tell a company directly what they don't like about a product. "Those for whom we do the communication can be much better involved through digital PR," the expert summarized.

Ethical issues through new opportunities

"We are all sitting in a big laboratory - socially speaking," explained Susanne Grof-Korbel, Managing Director of Bettertogether, drawing attention to sensitive aspects of the new digital possibilities. This laboratory situation, she said, brings with it many ethical issues, especially where advertising and PR overlap. As an example from the digital communications world, Grof-Korbel cited beauty events for children. "That's where the influencers sit, and those girls like to watch them on YouTube." From a marketing point of view, that would be positive because new target groups would be opened up, but from an ethical point of view, he said, the question has to be asked: "Do I have to do everything now because it's possible?"

"The ethical question is not a PR question - it's corporate ethics," added Markus Setznagel, Senior PR Manager at Austrian Airlines. Even what would initially be good from a marketing point of view would eventually "shoot back" if the measures were not well received by society. To meet the challenges of digitization, Austrian Airlines is relying on a newsroom concept. According to Setznagel, everything revolves around the basic consideration: What is the topic and how do I reach the target group with it? Only then can the format and channel be determined. "The newsroom concept thrives on the fact that you have to work much more openly with each other," says Setznagel. In this constellation, "channel managers" work closely with "topic managers," who plan the communication measures in daily joint editorial meetings of the transnational group of companies.

More self-determination through artificial intelligence

"Technical jargon remains technical jargon, no matter how you communicate it," noted Klaus Candussi, managing director of Atempo, backing up his point with empirical figures: 60 percent of the population cannot comprehend what quality media, companies, and government agencies communicate because the level of linguistic complexity is too high. To counteract this, atempo is working with various partner organizations to enable more people to understand. Among other things, easy-to-understand news is offered together with the Austria Press Agency. Through digitalization and the use of artificial intelligence, Candussi expects, texts of all kinds can be automatically translated into simple language in the future, making a significant contribution to the self-determination of many people.

The panel agreed that artificial intelligence has a lot of potential to make work easier in a digitalized PR industry and free up capacity for creative processes. (pd)

Among the traditional TV audience, RTS lost ground slightly in 2019. Together, RTS 1 and RTS 2 achieved a market share of 33.9 percent last year. In prime time, the channels reached an average of 1.2 million people per week, according to RTS on Tuesday.

The fact that the reach of 1.25 million viewers and the market share of 35.3 percent were higher in 2018 was due in particular to major sporting events such as the World Cup and the Olympic Games, the communiqué said.

Less in front of the screen

However, people are also spending less time in front of the screen overall. In 2019, TV consumption averaged 131 minutes per capita per day, down from 133 minutes and 139 minutes in 2018 and 2017, respectively.

RTS's market share and reach also declined slightly in radio. The radio stations La Première, Espace 2, Couleur 3 and Option Musique had a combined share of 49.1 percent (50.8 percent in 2018). Together, the radio stations reach an average of 803,000 people each week (883,000 in 2018).

Successful on the Internet

On the other hand, RTS significantly strengthened its presence on the Internet and in social networks. The RTS website and mobile app again grew strongly, with an average of 504,000 visits per day (+9.1 percent) and 561,000 unique users (+9.6 percent).

RTS is also reaching an increasingly broad audience on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin, with a total of 612,000 views (+28.8 percent) and 34,000 daily interactions (+6.3 percent). (SDA)