I come here from outside the Darknet, I have to tell you, it's very scammy

The pre-Christmas period: According to surveys by the OVK (Online Marketing Group in the BVDW), 31% of advertising investments for digital online and mobile advertising in Germany were made in the last quarter of 2016. In the months of November and December, this amounted to 384 million euros net. A peak season for advertisers and therefore also for fraudsters.

If you look at the latest market analyses on ad fraud, it quickly becomes clear how much of the 384 million invested is not being used optimally. In individual cases, up to 27% of impressions on non-optimized pages in the display area were affected by ad fraud in 2017. Up to 5.3% were measured for direct purchases from publishers.

What exactly is ad fraud?

Ad fraud is generally very volatile. New browsers, new bot networks and new criminal tactics complicate the ongoing arms race. Only 43 percent of marketers understand exactly how ad fraud works. According to the US Media Rating Council (MRC), ad fraud includes:

• the automatic sale of advertising inventory via bots or mobile app services running in the background
• the delivery of pre-roll videos on display banner areas
• hiding advertisements behind or in other page elements so that they are not visible
• Advertisements on a website that was not provided in the RTB request - known as domain spoofing
• the falsification of user data such as location or browser type
• Prevent users from responding to the ad by frequently refreshing the ad section or page.

Ad fraud undermines the purpose of advertising: to communicate the right message in the right place to the right recipient. Fraudsters use all three of these areas of advertising for their activities using various methods such as pixel stuffing, ad stacking, non-human traffic, domain spoofing, user spoofing and many more. The most common types of fraud are non-human traffic and domain spoofing. Domain spoofing is often used to disguise insecure websites. Fraudsters manipulate the domains of websites such as video piracy sites in order to conceal their true identity and generate profit from the traffic.

How does ad fraud occur?

The demand for advertising inventory increases, especially in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Fraudsters provide new, cheap advertising inventory. The ads are forwarded to bots so that the fraudsters receive payment. However, the campaign results show a very good performance. Therefore, KPIs that focus on quantity rather than quality are not useful. Many people think of ad fraud primarily in terms of bots. There are other types of online advertising fraud that generate smaller increases in CPMs, for example. Bot traffic, on the other hand, provides a source of income that did not exist before.

Identify fraud

• Measure fraud in all campaigns to understand the overall impact on performance.
• Use solutions against fraud that have been recognized by the Media Rating Council (MRC) for general (General) and complex (Sophisticated) Invalid Traffic (IVT). Whereby the fraudulent traffic is the SIVT. General non-human traffic consists of crawlers that facilitate internet usage and also bots that are used to locate fraudulent traffic.
• Follow the MRC guidelines for SIVT detection and filtration.
• Ask the service providers with anti-fraud solutions, ad servers or other providers how bots and other forms of SIVT can be measured.
• Offer or demand more transparency regarding advertising inventory and traffic, including traffic sources and audience extensions.
• Use verification and fraud applications that confirm that ads were delivered according to plan (to the desired websites, devices, locations and recipients); whether the environments had ad clutter or other placement issues; whether brand safety could be ensured.

5 tips on how to prevent ad fraud

• Block fraudulent impressions before they reach the Creative Ad server.
• Sort out marked, infected PCs to prevent future advertising fraud.
• Sort out websites that already have fraudulent activity in their history and can be identified by page-level scoring.
• Use blacklisting and/or whitelisting.
• Use pre-bid screening.

Christmas arms race

With increasingly sophisticated types of fraud, the digital industry must also further develop its fraud detection capabilities to assess the authenticity of impressions and avoid buying and selling fraudulent inventory. The fight against ad fraud can only be won if networks, devices, browsers and user behavior are better analyzed through data science and technologies and, above all, through targeted education. Risks must be identified through malware analysis, software decomposition and infiltration of hacker communities, and technologies must be developed accordingly. Verification and optimization providers take on this task. The most important thing, however, is to raise awareness of fraud and help solve the problem. It is crucial that all members of the digital ecosystem are part of the process and the solution. Advertisers, agencies and marketers should all be using these technologies to ensure that fraudsters no longer have a chance to steal Christmas sales.

About the author

Oliver Hülse is responsible for the business activities of Integral Ad Science (IAS) in Central and Eastern Europe. IAS is a global technology and data provider that develops solutions for the verification, optimization and analysis of media quality.

*Source: Integral Ad Science Media Quality Report 1st half of 2017 in Germany