• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 24, 2014

The backlash against GroupM’s pullout from open exchanges continued during OMMA RTB, not surprisingly, on the “fraud panel.” While the panel acknowledged that the presence of fraudulent traffic, as well as non-fraudulent non-human traffic are legitimate concerns on open exchanges, the consensus was that GroupM is just copping out.

“Too me, it seemed a little heavy-handed,” Rocket Fuel CTO Mark Torrance said, adding that while the move may weed out the “honey pots on fraudulent sites,” it will not prevent exposure to non-human traffic on premium publishers’ sites.

Torrance then gave a hypothetical example to illustrate the logic, using TiVo’s TV ad-skipping to make the point. If the state of Delaware were to “outlaw” TiVo, he said, would it make sense for an agency like GroupM to only buy TV ads in Delaware to avoid TV ad skipping?

“Would you restrict your television buying only to Delaware, or would you take advantage o that and still take advantage of the rest of the market,” he said.

Jeremy Leonard, COO of IMM suggested GroupM’s move is even more serious, because it could have the opposite effect on the problems GroupM is seeking to resolve.

“GroupM is not naive by any means,” he said, “but with their buying power they have the ability to clean up a lot of this stuff.  Walking away from this and getting on the other side of what is essentially a velvet rope is a weak response.”

IMSERVICES/AMM Founder-CEO DIck Bennett, however, said that may be exactly what GroupM wants to do by drawing attention to the move. He likened it to a game of “Texas Hold’em.”