January 25, 2023
Google Protects Advertisers, Cracks Down On Ad Fraud
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, December 2, 2015
Domains
that falsely represent advertising inventory remain a major problem across the Web. Google on Wednesday took another step to fight ad fraud by releasing a feature in DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) that
can block these types of publishing domains, protecting advertisers.
Publishers sometimes intentionally make it look like their traffic comes from another Web site -- usually a well-known, premium Web site -- to charge higher rates for ads. The practice deceives advertisers that pay to appear on the well-known brand sites, but end up serving ads on those in which they don't want to associate.
When DBM recognizes that a publisher fraudulently misrepresents domain information, a filter excludes the inventory before advertisers can bid on it, regardless of the exchange or the reported domain. Steps have been taken to ensure the filter targets only cases where the false representation masks the real value of the inventory. Google discovered that in some instances, this type of activity has accounted for up to 40% of inventory for a particular exchange.
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In one instance, Andres Ferrate, chief advocate for Google Ad Traffic Quality, explains that a publisher attempting to sell ad inventory on a pirated movie sharing Web site was falsely represented with the domain name of a well-known newspaper. The filter prevented ads from being purchased and displayed, thereby safeguarding advertisers from fraud and preventing this copyright-infringing publisher from receiving advertising revenue, according to Andres Ferrate, chief advocate, Google Ad Traffic Quality, in a post.
Versions of ad fraud also occur in search results. This is analogous in some ways to the display-serving practice referred to in Ryanair's court action against online travel agent eDreams, in which it pulls in Google, accusing the site of misleading customers and not offering the best deal in search results. Initiated by eDreams, Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary says Google did not serve up true Ryanair prices and claims the travel company created Web sites using the keyword "Ryanair" to mislead customers.
Overall, the U.S. digital advertising industry loses $8.2 billion a year from fraudulent impressions, infringed content, and costs associated with malvertising, according to a new report commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), conducted by Ernst & Young (EY).
More than half the money wasted in the digital advertising ecosystem comes from non-human traffic -- fake advertising impressions that are neither generated by real advertisers nor received by actual consumers. Eliminating these fraudulent impressions would save advertisers more than $4 billion annually, according to the IAB report.
3 comments about "Google Protects Advertisers, Cracks Down On Ad Fraud".
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Awesome to see Google taking further steps in this fight.
Knik, knak, patty whack. Throw dog a bone.
It's worrying how these promises of the industry and the comments of media on those promises make less and less sense. It's like listening to Donald Trump making election promises.
The problem Google is talking about, is tiny compared to the actual problem. One of the bigger problems is how Google according to evidence charge advertisers on Youtube even when Google knows it's a bot. Did Google even bother to comment this? No. Did Google work together with the researchers to make sure the problem gets solved? No.
At this point, let us be clear that I would love to be wrong about this and almost everything else I'm saying.
Now that we are asking questions, let's ask Google "who is making the most money ouf of ad fraud?" Turns out the question is not hard to answer, you can try for yourself here:
https://medium.com/@mikkokotila/wtf-is-going-on-with-ad-fraud-ac6739745721#.jpqmm4tb3
Another issue Google needs to talk about, is how Adsense is and has always been the preferred playing field of black hats. adwords/adsense arbitrage needs to be discussed. Botnets need to be discussed, traffic coming from google developer servers need to be discussed. etc.
Google can get to the bottom of most things easily just from its own log-files. If there is any doubt to this claim, we can provide a well documented proven logfile analysis approach that is perfect for this, together with scripts to actually do the work. But it's really easy, and Google knows this I hope.
If Google has a counter-argument to any of this, let's bring it out and have a debate on it.
The proposal in the article, coming from someone like Google, appears to be little more than sleight of hand. Or Google really genuinly is lost in regards to this subject matter. What makes things worse, is how media is supposed to be able to trust someone like Google for their statements to make sense.
If this is really the level where Google is, then I will make every resource we have with botlab.io available for Google to help it understand the problem better. FREE OF CHARGE.
If media needs to understand the topic better, so that journos can write about it in a more sensible way, we're here for that too. But whatever it is, we can't keep doing "this" anymore. We can't keep saying things, and writing about things, which we don't understand. Not even when it's really really popular to do that.
As it is with all of my industry comments, I'm always looking for someone who can show that my views are wrong. Please help if you can.
Also, join botlab.io for free http://botlab.io
Love seeing Augustin and Mikko, two of the smartest data scientists in this space providing insights. We might need to hold a TAG industry forum to further hash out next steps. Make no mistake, great strides are being made, including this latest announcement from Google, but we need to continue to push the envelope. Open invite to join TAG's Anti-Fraud Working Group.