• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 21, 2015

Magnetic CEO James Green says his firm has figured out a simple, elegant and -- he claims -- fool-proof solution to weeding out bot-driven digital ad fraud. Not surprisingly, it requires someone to spend money. But in this case, he’s not referring to brand marketers or their agency teams spending money, but the consumers they are trying to reach.

“One thing a bot can’t do, is spend money,” Green explained during the “fraud” panel this morning at OMMA Art & Science in Los Angeles.

Specifically, Green said Magnetic’s solution involves accessing data from “350 retail clients” to track when online users actually buy something at e-tail. When online users spend money to buy something, he said, it’s a pretty good assumption they’re not a bot.

“We haven’t seen a bot go out and spend money with a retailer -- yet,” Green quipped, adding, “So we know that’s not fraud.”

Green described the retail data effort as a “major initiative” at Magnetic, and estimated its database generates “60-70%” of its impressions from “known people.