What is Ad Fraud: Programmatic advertising has created an ecosystem in which advertisers and publishers can participate, but operational limitations mean bad actors can try to exploit the system.
This fraud was first introduced in 2001, but how is it being perpetrated today? A year into the ad tech industry.
For publishers, knowing how ad fraud works is key to prevention. In this guide, we review how ad fraud impacts publishers, explain the most common methods of ad fraud, and finally provide steps publishers can take to protect themselves.
Table of Contents
What is ad fraud?
Ad fraud is the act of manipulating traffic, clicks, impressions, conversions, or manipulatively representing data events with the intent of generating revenue. Ad fraud is available to legitimate publishers and advertisers across multiple media and formats. It is a complex problem that impacts many different sectors.
How does ad fraud impact publishers?
Ad fraud is expected to drive growth in 2023 from $35 billion in 2018. This will be a loss.
Many people think that ad fraud only affects advertisers. I think so. While most types of ad fraud directly result in loss of ad spend to advertisers, ad fraud also has devastating effects on publishers.
First, let’s target legitimate publishers, as there are many different types of ad fraud. The money ends up in the hands of the bad guys who manipulate it. As the industry becomes more aware of ad fraud, Yan, a publisher, lost access to the ad network and exchanges that he operates through no fault of his own. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, ad fraud creates barriers between advertisers and publishers, destroying trust, which in turn affects the health of the network.
What are some examples of ad fraud?
Domain manipulation.
Fake domains refer to people who masquerade as another trusted website, tricking advertisers into paying premium fees to impersonate them. For example, the Financial Times reported on one such fake or “spoofed” FT.com a few years ago. Records have been observed to be sold on the highest priced exchanges. In addition, it is estimated that the agency sells fake FT ad space for $1.3 million per month.
Domain spoofing does not always depend on the spoofing publisher. This means that bad actors can set up high-quality fake websites that scrape content and try to make a profit by sending low traffic and ads. CNBC’s McGraham reports that after she set up a website and posted copyrighted content from CNBC, she was able to get advertising permission from several networks.
Cookie stuffing.
For example, Amazon and eBay offer e-commerce brands and many platform products that encourage third-party content creators to use affiliate marketing. When a user makes a purchase, a percentage of the transaction that influences that transaction is paid to the affiliate through a commission. Identification of such transactions is managed by third-party tracking cookies.
Cookie placement is done in conjunction with the website currently visited by the user and is one of the acts of leaving seamless interactive tracking cookies without the user’s knowledge. If the user subsequently visits an e-commerce site and makes a qualifying purchase, the merchant will be charged a commission if the cookie placer has no legal obligation in the purchase process. Advertiser cookie spending and its impact on honest affiliate publishers Pavlak is stealing credit for leadership and entrepreneurship.
Filling Pixels
Pixel stuffing is an advertising campaign that uses a cost-per-mile (CPM) model. It is a type of visual manipulation that is designed to be used. It works by including one or more ads that are invisible to the human eye.
Pixel stuffing allows scammers to place dozens of ads on a single web page and receive credit for providing some of those views. These campaigns don’t produce any results for the advertiser, and the ads are not seen by real users. Pixel stuffing is usually associated with low-quality areas and records, but even with high-volume printers, the quality records can be unknowingly tampered with by a third party.
Stacking Ads
Ad stacking works similarly to cookie layering, but instead of being used in a 1 x 1 pixel position, the ad elements are actually stacked on top of each other. This way, scammers can stack five ads on top of each other and claim credit for all five ads. However, users can only see one ad.
Ad insertion
Ad insertion is done by scammers using browser extensions, plugins, and other software. They use fraudulent software, insert ads where they are not visible, or have publishers replace existing ads with a different set of ads. These ads are monetized using CPC and CPM models, but bad actors are acting like law, privatizing ad revenues, even though Man does not own the records.
One of the biggest challenges of ad insertion attacks is targeting affected companies. They may not be immediately aware of their presence. The most commonly used security tools focus on server-side monitoring, while advertisers work on the client side. By the time publishers realize they are under attack by tracking revenue metrics, some are already subverted.
Masking the Earth.
Some countries are more valuable for travel than others, and CPMs, especially, can vary greatly depending on traffic conditions. Fraudsters can take advantage by hiding the origin of their traffic and selling non-value-added traffic to advertisers.
Advertisers are directly influenced by geography, such as advertising tilt. Most categories of magic required them to pay for items that were deemed valuable, but the results were not achieved. In some cases, even legitimate publishers may be at risk from third parties selling traffic from lower-value regions.
How to prevent ad fraud.
Ad fraud comes in many forms, and there is no single solution that can adequately protect your assets. The key to prevention is to check security checks early and make sure you have reliable coverage. That’s what it takes to work with a broadcast-quality vendor.
Maintain the file ads.txt. Make sure you have an ads.txt file to explicitly declare which ad networks, exchanges, and SSPs are authorized to resell your listing. Make sure your admin financial partner hosts a valid Sellers.json file.
I don’t know if you can do that, but I’m going to make sure you can’t. A message was sent to If someone has violated your copyright, send a DMCA takedown notice.
Set up custom reminders. Many types of ad fraud are hard to detect by observing on-page behavior. Please note that in these situations, you are responsible for any sudden changes in trip or revenue values. Most analytics tools, including Google Analytics, allow admin users to review sessions and create custom alerts based on metrics such as page views and bounce rates.
Solicit user feedback: Ads such as ad insertion and forced replay Some types of fraud can be hard for site owners to detect, but delays are easily observable by recipients. Provide an easy way for users to communicate and provide feedback about their landing page experience and their experience with ads on your site.
Partner with trusted vendors: Specific problems require specific solutions. Both media tech buyers and sellers combined with media tech entrepreneurs can prevent evil. It’s up to publishers and advertisers. Look for vendors who can provide technical and timely advice to avoid ad fraud.
Check third-party plugins and scripts: Publishers should use third-party CMS plugins and extensions to run ads, analytics, and extend the functionality of their sites. Properties provided by developers you don’t know or trust can be ad fraud and a sign of user data collection. Always check the code before using it to see what it does.