Digital Ad Fraud FAQ Question 1

May 2020 / Page 0marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Digital Ad Fraud
FAQ #1
May 2020
Augustine Fou, PhD.
acfou [at] mktsci.com
212. 203 .7239

FAQ #1
“Publishers claim to only have 0.2-1%
IVT on their sites. Can it be possible?”

Answer
• Yes. That is possible for “good publishers” (ones that don’t
source traffic); this is because fraud bots won’t waste time
loading pages on sites that don’t pay them for traffic. Fraud
bots will load pages on sites that pay them for traffic
• Good publishers will still have normal search engine crawlers
and other “honest” bots that declare themselves (bot tells
you it is “moatbot, Googlebot, facebookbot,” etc.
• Be sure to also confirm for humans, because “not invalid” or
“not bots” does not automatically mean “human.” (see dark
blue in the next 3 slides)

Definitions (for charts below)
What each of the labels means
• Humans - 3 or more blue flags to confirm
• Some blue flags but not 3 or more
• Can’t label it either red or blue
• Tag was called, but no data was sent back (blocked)
• Tag was not called (not measurable)
• Bot – Search crawler
• Bot – Says its name honestly, (14,000 bot names)
• Some red flags, but not 3 or more
• Bots - 3 or more red flags to confirm

Good publisher 1
Great consistency in the data; lots of humans (blue), low bots

Good publisher 2
Declared (orange), search (yellow), other bots can be identified

Good publisher 3
Search engine crawlers (yellow) can account for 5-10% of traffic

Answer
• Some good publishers also filter for bots (datacenter,
declared) – this means when the visitor is from a data center,
or a declared bot, the ad calls are NOT made
• When the publisher filters for data center and declared bots,
the resulting bot % can indeed be sub-1% - in the charts
above, they would filter out the yellow (search crawlers) and
orange (declared bots)

Good publisher, filter datacenter/bots
10% red
3% red
“Filter for GIVT and data center; don’t call ads”
27% red
17% red
-7%
-10%
On-Site measurement
In-Ad measurement
Filter applied Stopped buying traffic

Answer
• On-site measurement is most accurate; but fake sites won’t
allow measurement tags to be added to the site. So most
marketers will only have in-ad measurement
• Most fraud sites buy traffic that is well-disguised; that means
standard IVT verification tech is not detecting it as “invalid” so
ad impressions get marked as “valid” even though they are
not
• By analyzing for other forms of fraud (e.g. mobile apps that
load webpages) we can catch a lot more fraud

Places to buy “valid” traffic

IVT only catches bots, misses other
Sites and apps that cheat may look fine in bot detection reports
1.3% + 57% = 58%IVT site/app fraud overall fraud
bot detection sees this
bot detection misses this

Campaign example
Not Measurable 0.0%
No Client-Side Data 6.9%
DESKTOP GIVT/SIVT Humans Other
Disguised
Traffic
Device
Error
App
Fraud
49% 11.3% 0.1% 88.6%
0.2% 0.3% 10.1%
MOBILE GIVT/SIVT Humans Other
44% 1.2% 14.5% 84.3%
DEFINITIONS
• Not measurable – no tags sent (this should be zero, ads are called by JS)
• No Client-Side Data – no data sent back, ad blocker or browser block
• Other – not enough blue or red labels to confirm
• Disguised Traffic – fake traffic, bounced through residential proxies
• Device Error – one or more factors indicating fake device
• App Fraud – apps loading webpages and other non-IVT fraud
Mobile apps using hidden webview browsers to load webpages;
those appear to be mobile devices loading webpages;
NOT detected by IVT verification.

Campaign Examples
Filtered versus not filtered campaigns – basic G-IVT
3% IVT 25 - 40% IVT
well managed NOT well managed

High bot/fraud examples

Answer
• Industry-reported benchmarks are in the 1 – 3% range for this
reason; they are only reporting IVT, and missing other forms
of fraud, which could be many times higher

IAS – 1.9% (desktop display)
Source: IAS Media Quality Report H1 2019

IAS – 0.9% (mobile display)

IAS – 1.1% (desktop video)

WhiteOps - 3% IVT
Source: WhiteOps Bot Baseline, May 2019

Answer
• It is important to actually detect what sites the ads actually
loaded on, instead of just assume the domain from the bid
request (fake sites pass legit domains in bid request, in order
to get bids)
• Legit sites that are spoofed get falsely accused of high IVT;
but none of the bots or fake traffic were actually on the real
legit publisher’s site

Good pubs, wrongly accused
Domain spoofing causes legit pubs to get accused of high IVT
Domain (spoofed) % SIVT
esquire.com 77%
travelchannel.com 76%
foodnetwork.com 76%
popularmechanics.com 74%
latimes.com 72%
reuters.com 71%
to get bids
fakesite123.com
esquire.compasses blacklist passes whitelist✅ ✅
declares to be
1. fakesite123.com has to pretend to be
esquire.com to get bids;
2. fraud measurement shows high IVT
b/c it is measuring the fake site with
fake traffic
3. Fake esquire.com gets mixed with
real so average fraud rates appear
high.
4. Real esquire.com gets backlisted; bad
guy moves on to another domain.

Digital Ad Fraud FAQ Question 1

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