History and Impact of Digital Ad Fraud

December 2020 / Page 0marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
History and Global Impact
of Digital Ad Fraud
December 2020
Augustine Fou, PhD.
acfou [at] mktsci.com
212. 203 .7239

Real billboards .. vs virtual
Infinite quantities of digital ads can be created on real or fake sites
Unlike real billboards that
people actually drive by in
the physical world …
Limitless quantities of digital
ads can be created on fake
sites that humans never visit.

Not humans, something else

Leads
(CPL)
Sales
(CPA)
Lead Gen
$3.4B
Other
$6.7B
• classifieds
• sponsorship
• rich media
• audio
CPM/CPC are top targets for fraud
Impressions
(CPM/CPV)
Clicks
(CPC)
Video
17%
92% digital ad spend ($125B – U.S. FY 2019)
Source: IAB FY 2019 Report
mobile
search
21%
desktop
search
23%
desktop
display
11%
mobile
display
20%
8%

Context and Sizing
of Ad Fraud

Industry downplayed fraud for years
“The 11 percent decline in
two years is particularly
noteworthy” – ANA (2019)
“IVT is between 1 – 3%”
– GroupM (2019)
“IVT is 1.41%”
– TAG (2019)

Famous botnets, primary use/stats
2019 20202017 20182015 20162013 20142011 20122010
IceBucket
CTV fraud,
2B imps /day
Coreflood
DDoS, web
scraping,
credential
stealing
Grum
40B spam
emails /day
ZeroAccess
Click fraud
Bitcoin
mining 488
TB traffic
/day
Avalanche
Ransomewar
e, RATs,
banking
trojans
Mirai
IoT malware,
665 Gbps
DDoS
Methbot
Video ad
fraud, 300M
/day
Hyphbot
Ad fraud, 34k
websites
3ve
Ad fraud
1.7M devices,
12B ad req
/day
Conficker
DDoS,10M
computers
Judy
Ad fraud, 41
apps, 37M
devices
Fireball
Ad fraud
browser
hijack, 250M
devices
SndApps
IMEI/person
al info
stealing,
adware
Chameleon
Click fraud,
fake mouse
moves, ad
fraud
Rustock
Email spam,
2,000
/second
RottenSys
Android
adware,
malware
WannaCry
Kelihos
Necurs
Zeus
Dridex
Emotet
Spam,
banking
trojans
Ransomware
WePurchaseApps
127 apps,
millions of
downloads
Cheetah
600 apps, 4+
billion
downloads
DO Global
6 apps, 50M
downloads,
ad fraud
VidMate
500M installs,
ad fraud
iHandy
46 apps,
100M installs,
ad fraud
DiCaprio
CTV fraud
Grindr faking
Roku
streams
CooTek
60 apps, 50M
downloads,
ad fraud
ClearSkins
Fake Sites,
80M video
views /day
Adap.tv
Video ad
fraud
(unnamed)
5,000 mobile
apps, display
ad fraud
Boris
Network for
sites for ad
fraud
FreeStreams
Network of
sites,
audience
overlap ad
fraud
DDoS
Spam, banking, ransomware
Ad fraud

Overall fraud is more than just bots
Sites and apps that cheat may look fine in bot detection reports
1.3% + 57% = 58%
bot fraud site/app fraud overall fraud
bot detection sees this
bot detection misses this

2020
• More than 1,000 different user-
agents
• More than 300 different appIDs
• At least 2 million spoofed IP
addresses
• About 1,700 SSAI server IPs
located in 9 countries
Source: WhiteOps, April 2020
“IceBucket, the Largest Ever
Connected TV Bot Attack”
“the bot operation impersonated
more than 2 million people in over
30 countries, generating 2 billion
impressions, targeting high value
CTV inventory ($20-$30 CPM)”
2019
Source: Buzzfeed News
• 8 apps, more than 2 billion
downloads
• Ad fraud in background,
click flooding, stealing info
New “largest ever” scheme every year
Vast botnets targeting high-value video/CTV ads, disguising/hiding

Millions of apps on millions of phones
Big companies openly committing fraud; in-app is far less measurable
October 2018
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/
article/craigsilverman/how-a-
massive-ad-fraud-scheme-
exploited-android-phones-to
November 2018
article/craigsilverman/android-
apps-cheetah-mobile-kika-
kochava-ad-fraud
March 2019
article/craigsilverman/in-banner-
video-ad-fraud
April 2019
article/craigsilverman/google-
play-store-ad-fraud-du-group-
baidu

Selected examples of mobile app fraud
Openly committing ad fraud with apps, adware, malware
December 2020
https://threatpost.com/rai
nbowmix-apps-google-
play-ad-fraud/159982/
August 2020
https://www.zdnet.com/ar
ticle/google-play-apps-
promised-free-shoes-but-
users-got-ad-fraud-
malware-instead/
January 2020
https://labs.bitdefender.co
m/2020/01/seventeen-
android-nasties-spotted-in-
google-play-total-over-
550k-downloads/
February 2020
https://www.mobilemarket
er.com/news/google-
removes-600-apps-from-
google-play-to-reduce-ad-
fraud/572700/
June 2020
https://www.trendmicro.c
om/en_us/research/20/f/n
ew-tekya-ad-fraud-found-
on-google-play.html

multiterra ctv
fraud
monarch
ctv fraud
CTV/OTT Fraud So Far in 2020
January 2020
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/a
rticle/craigsilverman/grindr-roku-
apps-ad-fraud-scheme
March 2020
https://www.adweek.com/progra
mmatic/pixalate-ad-fraud-scheme-
roku-murkiness-ctv/
Dicaprio
ctv fraud
icebucket ctv
fraud
April 2020
https://www.marketingdive.com/new
s/recent-ctv-ad-fraud-scheme-could-
be-biggest-ever/576226/
https://www.axios.com/multiterra-
ad-fraud-scheme-911438e5-4a9d-
4f2f-9284-e523bbe779f5.html
September 2020
“DiCaprio” “Monarch” “IceBucket” “MultiTerra”

Global Impact of
Ad Fraud

Why is ad fraud bad?
Advertisers Publishers
Bad Guys
1/3
2/3
Ads are not shown
to humans, wasted
ad dollars
Ad revenue declines
because dollars are
stolen by bad guys.
Steal money using fake
ads; siphon dollars out
of ecosystem.

Chase: -99% reach, no impact
“JPMorgan had already decided
last year to oversee its own
programmatic buying operation.
Advertisements for JPMorgan
Chase were appearing on about
400,000 websites a month. [But]
only 12,000, or 3 percent, led to
activity beyond an impression.
[Then, Chase] limited its display
ads to about 5,000 websites. We
haven’t seen any deterioration on
our performance metrics,” Ms.
Lemkau said.”
“99% reduction in ‘reach’ … Same Results.”
Source: NYTimes, March 29, 2017
(because it wasn’t real, human reach)

P&G: cut $200M, no impact
“Once we got transparency, it
illuminated what reality was,” said
Mr. Pritchard. P&G then took
matters into its owns hands and
voted with its dollars, he said.”
“As we all chased the Holy Grail of
digital, self-included, we were
relinquishing too much control—
blinded by shiny objects,
overwhelmed by big data, and ceding
power to algorithms,” Mr. Pritchard
said.
Source: WSJ, March 2018

Uber: cut 80%, no change
• Uber cut $120M from $150M, signups remained steady; paid
signups dropped, and organic signups increased to replace it.
• Uber sued 100 mobile exchanges for falsifying placement
reports and fabricating transparency reports.

Local news killed by fake news
Local news sites relied on ad revenue; fake sites stole ad budgets
McClatchy Bankruptcy 1,300 local news “deserts”2,000 newspapers died

Fake news feeds on ad dollars
Fake local news sites tricked users, committed ad fraud for years
Discovery of Fake Sites
fake local news sites

Look at Your Own
Analytics and Reports

Abnormal data consistency
When analytics are TOO consistent, something is suspicious
top 4 referring sites – exact same pattern Where to find this?
Hourly analytics reports
(e.g. Google Analytics, ad
server reports)
What to look for?
If select parameters look
too similar across multiple
domains, that is suspicious
(e.g. same pages/session,
ultra low bounce rates,
99% Android visits).
What to do?
Identify the sites that
exhibit abnormal
consistency; investigate
further andd turn them off.

Abnormal data consistency
Sites with 100% “social traffic”, 100% Android, 100% same browser
Where to find this?
Your own ad server records or
log files; also fraud detection
data files with supporting details
What to look for?
Abnormal consistency like 100%
Android, 100% same browser
version, 100% of traffic is from
Facebook, etc.
What to do?
These sites use these methods of
cheating that are not typically
caught by bot detection; decide
whether you want to keep
buying from them. Turn off in
campaign interface.

Where do visitors click?
Click patterns on desktop and mobile screens, vs bots

FouAnalytics
Site
Analytics
Media
Analytics
“see fou yourself”
• alternative to Google Analytics
• secure, hardened against attack
• shows all details, no black box
• innovated w/ practitioners
• verify your own media/ads
• secure, hardened against attack
• shows details for decisioning
• recommended optimizations
for #publishers for #marketers

Dr. Augustine Fou – Digital Marketer
Further Reading:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou
https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/augustinefou
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/presentations

History and Impact of Digital Ad Fraud

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