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Rich Kahn

Member since March 2015Contact Rich

Richard K. Kahn, co-founder and CEO of eZanga.com, Inc., has been a leader in the online advertising industry since 1993. Kahn has an extensive background in digital advertising and ad fraud detection. A natural coder, Kahn took his knowledge of the advertising space and built technology to aid in the identification of bad traffic. Made available to his clients as a layer of protection, Anura thrives on over a decade of data collection to spot real humans from bots or human fraud farms. He has been recognized as one of the most notable search engine marketing gurus and considered a security expert in the industry with his in-house development of eZanga’s fraud filtration platform, Traffic Advisors. In 1993, right on the cusp of the dot-com bubble, Kahn organized and wrote an e-magazine which later transitioned into his next endeavor, the First Street Corporation, an Internet Service Provider, which he later sold to a publicly traded organization. Rich co-founded Paid for Surf in 1999, which reached its first million dollar revenue in five months of operation. In 2001, Rich joined advertising network AdOrigin as its COO and was instrumental in the successful turnaround and financial profit within three months of joining. Kahn held positions with corporations including Verizon Wireless and Bloomberg. He has been quoted in several major publications such as INC.com, DM News, ADOTAS, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, SmartCEO Magazine, Wired Magazine and Crain’s New York Business, and has appeared on the CNN television network. Kahn's leadership and management of eZanga.com has allowed him to become an award-winning executive who has been honored regionally and nationally. In 2010, Kahn received the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Technology industry for the Greater Philadelphia area, as well as being named a finalist in the American Business Awards for Best Executive of the Year. In 2011, Kahn was featured in the Smart 100 book as a Smart100 CEO.

Articles by Rich All articles by Rich

  • Garbage Out, Garbage In: Can Publishing Poor Quality News Result in More Ad Fraud? in Publishers Daily on 12/06/2017

    It's a challenging time for publishers, as many struggle to attract an audience and to compete with giants like Facebook and Google. Most have some sort of paid traffic strategy in place, and that's OK, but the sites that maximize short-term gains by pushing "news" out in a frenzy tend to invest in paid traffic big time, and not always via reputable sources. These sites are more interested in driving page views than building a long-term, loyal audience organically. Another consideration some publishers overlook: the ways in which site quality relates to fraudulent traffic. Regardless of how a publisher is driving traffic, it has to take steps to recognize and protect itself from fraud.

Comments by Rich All comments by Rich

  • 'Booby-Trapped' Ad Delivered Via RTB Reveals The Ever Evolving World Of Ad Fraud by Tyler Loechner (RTBlog on 04/14/2015)

    Users simply need to make sure they keep their Flash version updated to the latest and greatest.  That is all you can do, however these fraudsters usually get some malware out, before an update to close the security issue is released.Flash has been a favorite of malware designers for years, so it makes sense for RTB and adnetworks to stop accepting Flash Ads. HTML5 has been around for years now and is a much better design for ads.It's time to force the switch from Flash to HTML5.

  • Google DoubleClick Network Hit With More Malvertising by Laurie Sullivan (Search & Performance Marketing Daily on 04/17/2015)

    I agree with the comments.In the end, the main issue for this type of fraud is the feature to allow advertisers to use an insecure ad format, which is Flash.  Put an end of life on Flash ads within the networks and this type of fraud goes away.  Pretty simple solution for a complex problem.  Fraud will find another way, but atleast we solve this issue now.In addition, the average user needs to make sure they keep their machines, Antivirus and antimalware software updated everyday...as this should go without saying.

  • Fighting Online Ad Fraud With More Sophisticated Metrics by Anto Chittilappilly (Metrics Insider on 02/25/2014)

    I have been fighting fraud on the buy side and sell side since 1993.  No matter how strong and advanced our anti-fraud system becomes, we still rely on client feed back on the backend performance.  It doesn't matter if our system or another 3rd party system says that it is real human traffic if it doesn't have the backend performance.We work effortlessly improving our algorithms to stay ahead of fraud to the best of our abilities, but the key to our system is incorporating our client's performance metrics into our system to make it improve our client's bottom line.We also spend a lot of time with our clients to educate them on what is real backend peformance.  Page views and Time on Site are not a good measure for quality...we look for sales, phone calls, legitimate leads...anything that shows TRUE performance.  The better our system gets, the better the performance our clients see.

  • Google, Yahoo Encrypting Ad Network Connections by Laurie Sullivan (SearchBlog on 04/20/2015)

    I agree with Craig and Augustine.  Like I said, privacy is a good thing, but this update will not have any affect on eliminating bot traffic.

  • Google, Yahoo Encrypting Ad Network Connections by Laurie Sullivan (SearchBlog on 04/20/2015)

    While I certainly understand the need to encrypt information to and from the public; I fail to see how this will help in anyway with stopping bot traffic.HTTPS encryption ensures our privacy with what we are searching for, what information we are getting and keeps those large Privacy Policy's in check.  That makes total sense and should be have been thay way for years.  I am glad to see that everyone is making a push to get this completed for those reasons.However, using HTTPS encryption to stop bots...how?  Maybe I am missing something here.  The way I understand bot traffic to happen is that the fraudsters need to establish accounts in order to get paid.  When they send bot traffic through, their account earns money and that is how they get paid.If they intercept an un-encrypted connection what can they do? Maybe flood someone else's account with bot traffic, but what is the benefit in doing so?  Hurting the competitors...maybe, but they won't make any money so why go through the expense.Can someone fill me in?

  • Three Truths About Fraud by Cory Treffiletti (Online Spin on 04/07/2015)

    Brian, is it something you built internally? I have been building our system, Traffic Advisors, for more than a decade.<br><br>We feel that our system, eliminates almost all of the fraudulent traffic too, and we based that on conversion data from our clients. We don't charge for our technology since the traffic is purchased from us.<br><br>My question is who makes the determination that your system is accurate since I have yet to see any 3rd party traffic quality scoring system agree with each other.<br><br>I am curious as I keep my eyes out for any technology that can prove itself :)

  • Three Truths About Fraud by Cory Treffiletti (Online Spin on 04/07/2015)

    Ed G,  the quote of "around 50% - 60%" was quoted from Ed P's comment.  I am not sure where that came from either. I have been doing TV advertising for my client on a cost per call basis because I know that as VOD increases, you won't be able to avoid the commercials. so that's a good thing for TV advertisers, but most consumers don't like it especially when we pay so much for TV services these days.

  • Silver Linings Emerge From Dark Cloud Of Ad Fraud by Josh Chasin (Metrics Insider on 04/09/2015)

    Josh, Great article on the subject.  I know that all of us are interested in eliminating NHT, but identifying that can be tricky.  There are many companies our there that help advertisers, publishers, ad networks, etc to identify NHT and that can be helpful.  I have been in the trenches for more than two decades fighting fraud both as an advertiser and an adnetwork and yet, it's a constant battle.  However, if we all work together we can solve this industry problem faster.  I look forward this year to all of us significantly reducing this unwanted traffic.

  • Three Truths About Fraud by Cory Treffiletti (Online Spin on 04/07/2015)

    Ed, I understand your point.  However, when I record my shows and use my DVR to zip through commercials, just like the majority of the population, I am not getting the marketing message that the advertiser is paing for.  Like you said, if we used commerical means to monitor what commercials are watched, it would be around 50% - 60%, which still means that viewablility, meaning someone physically seeing the commercial's message, is seen by 40% - 50% and that is still lower than the internet right now, which is a good thing for the internet.This is also dependant on the show being aired as some have high skip rates and some have low skip rates.If we look at Youtube that has video ads, 94% are skipped...so is the marketing message really being viewed by the intended user? (http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/agency-tries-make-ad-thats-all-unskippable-youtube-preroll-159183).All I was bringing up for discussion is that all marketing has their own viewability numbers, and where we are today, I believe the internet is the highest...but there is room for improvement!

  • Three Truths About Fraud by Cory Treffiletti (Online Spin on 04/07/2015)

    Ed, it was just a quick stat that I pulled from an article:  http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/aug/24/tv-advertising

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