2021 update on ad fraud brand safety privacy

February 2021 / Page 0
marketing.science
consulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Update on Ad Fraud,
Brand Safety, Privacy
February 2021
Augustine Fou, PhD.
acfou [at] mktsci.com

marketing.science
Ad Fraud: 2021

marketing.science

marketing.science
streamscam
ctv fraud
monarch
ctv fraud
CTV Fraud Cases: 2020-21
Mar 2020
Apr 2020
Dec 2020
“Monarch”
“IceBucket”
“StreamScam”
Sep 2020
“MultiTerra”
Parrotterra
ctv fraud
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/grindr-roku-apps-ad-fraud-scheme
https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/pixalate-ad-fraud-scheme-roku-murkiness-ctv/
https://www.marketingdive.com/news/recent-ctv-ad-fraud-scheme-could-be-biggest-ever/576226/
https://www.axios.com/multiterra-ad-fraud-scheme-911438e5-4a9d-4f2f-9284-e523bbe779f5.html
https://adage.com/article/digital/how-streamscam-made-145-million-no-streaming-content-and-ads-were-served-no-one/2302241
https://www.adexchanger.com/digital-tv/doubleverify-uncovers-largest-ctv-ad-fraud-scheme-to-date/
Jan 2021
“ParrotTerra”
Jan 2020
“DiCaprio”

marketing.science
Malvertising, Redirect Attacks
Large-scale malvertising attacks continue through ad networks
December 2020
https://blog.confiant.com/the-
trend-of-client-side-
fingerprinting-in-cloaked-landing-
pages-21915eb473df
January 2021
https://blog.confiant.com/persistent
-malvertising-attacker-dccboost-
raged-as-the-year-faded-
4d09340cd3f5
February 2021
https://blog.confiant.com/malvertiser-
scamclub-bypasses-iframe-sandboxing-
with-postmessage-shenanigans-cve-
2021-1801-1c998378bfba
February 2021
https://blog.confiant.com/malvertisin
g-made-in-china-f5081521b3f0

marketing.science
Mobile apps on millions of phones
Mobile apps monetize by loading ad impressions, on real devices
August 2020
https://www.zdnet.com/article/g
oogle-play-apps-promised-free-
shoes-but-users-got-ad-fraud-
malware-instead/
March 2020
https://thehackernews.com/202
0/03/android-apps-ad-fraud.html
June 2020
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.co
m/2020/06/17/more-ad-fraud-
apps-found-hiding-on-google-
play-store/
Feb 2020
https://www.marketingdive.com/
news/google-removes-600-apps-
from-google-play-to-reduce-ad-
fraud/572700/

marketing.science
Industry downplayed fraud
“The 11 percent decline in
two years is particularly
noteworthy” – ANA (2019)
“IVT is between 1 – 3%,
except in China (31%)”
– GroupM (2019)
“IVT is 1.41%”
– TAG (2019)

marketing.science
Overall fraud is more than just bots
Sites and apps that cheat may look fine in bot detection reports
1.3% + 57% = 58%
bot fraud site/app fraud overall
fraud
bot detection sees this
bot detection misses this

marketing.science
Not humans, something else

marketing.science
Brand Safety: 2021

marketing.science
Brand Safety Defunded Real News
Source: adalytics.io
“4 in 10 articles on wsj.com receive
conflicting brand safety values be labeled
as ‘safe’/‘unsafe’ or ‘unsafe’/‘safe’ by the
two BS vendors.”

marketing.science
BS Funded Fake News/Disinfo
Fake local news sites tricked users, committed ad fraud for years
fake local news sites coronavirus disinfo

marketing.science
Local news killed by fake news
Local news sites relied on ad revenue; fake sites stole ad budgets
McClatchy Bankruptcy 1,300 local news “deserts”
2,000 newspapers died

marketing.science
MRC accreditation for BS
Accreditation covers up the abuse and enables it to continue

marketing.science
Privacy: 2021

marketing.science
Hypertargeting, crappy params
Ad tech myths designed to keep advertisers spending
1 parameter: gender 42% accuracy
2 params: gender+age 24% accuracy

marketing.science
Audiences Stolen, Fake Oncologists
Journal of Clinical Oncology “cookie matching”
Bots pretend to be oncologists
by collecting cookie
Attract ad dollars to fake
sites when retargeted

marketing.science
Regulations and Monopolies
Beyond GDPR/CCPA, moves by Google and Apple cause ripples

marketing.science
Impact on Marketers

marketing.science
Chase: -99% reach, no impact
“JPMorgan had already decided
last year to oversee its own
programmatic buying operation.
Advertisements for JPMorgan
Chase were appearing on about
400,000 websites a month. [But]
only 12,000, or 3 percent, led to
activity beyond an impression.
[Then, Chase] limited its display
ads to about 5,000 websites. We
haven’t seen any deterioration on
our performance metrics,” Ms.
Lemkau said.”
“99% reduction in ‘reach’ … Same Results.”
Source: NYTimes, March 29, 2017
(because it wasn’t real, human reach)

marketing.science
P&G: cut $200M, no impact
“Once we got transparency, it
illuminated what reality was,” said
Mr. Pritchard. P&G then took
matters into its owns hands and
voted with its dollars, he said.”
“As we all chased the Holy Grail of
digital, self-included, we were
relinquishing too much control—
blinded by shiny objects,
overwhelmed by big data, and ceding
power to algorithms,” Mr. Pritchard
said.
Source: WSJ, March 2018

marketing.science
Uber: cut 80%, no change
• Uber cut $120M from $150M, signups remained steady; paid
signups dropped, and organic signups increased to replace it.
• Uber sued 100 mobile exchanges for falsifying placement
reports and fabricating transparency reports.

marketing.science
Supply chain costs/inefficiencies
Source: WFA, April 2016
Source: ANA, May 2015
Source: ISBA, May 2020
“only half of the dollar goes through
to the publisher, for showing ads”
“on top of that 15% goes ‘missing’
and cannot be accounted for”
“went missing”

marketing.science
Fraud Detection Tech
is Useless

marketing.science
False Positives; False Negatives
Many examples of incorrect measurements; harm to publishers

marketing.science
Bad guys easily avoid detection
Blocking of tags, altering measurement to avoid detection
Detection Tag Blocking— analytics
tags/fraud detection tags are accidentally
blocked or maliciously stripped out
“malicious code manipulated data to
ensure that otherwise unviewable ads
showed up in measurement systems
as valid impressions, which resulted in
payment being made for the ad.”
Source:
Buzzfeed,
March
2018

marketing.science
Traffic sellers’ “high quality traffic”
Many sources to buy “traffic” and even tune “quality” level
Choose Your “Traffic Quality Level”
“Valid traffic” goes
for higher prices

marketing.science
Legit sites incorrectly marked
Domain (spoofed) % SIVT
esquire.com 77%
travelchannel.com 76%
foodnetwork.com 76%
popularmechanics.com 74%
latimes.com 72%
reuters.com 71%
bid request
fakesite123.com
esquire.com
passes blacklist
passes whitelist
✅
✅
declared
1. fakesite123.com has to pretend
to be esquire.com to get bids;
2. fraud measurement shows high
IVT b/c it is measuring the fake
site with fake traffic
3. Fake esquire.com gets mixed
with real so average fraud rates
appear high.
4. Real esquire.com gets backlisted;
bad guy moves on to another
domain.

marketing.science
(2017) Pop-Unders / Redirects
These forms of fraud typically get by current fraud detection tech
a.k.a. “zero-click” “pop-under”
“forced-view” “auto-nav”
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/remember-tom

marketing.science
He said, she said
“there’s 15% IVT,
I want a refund”
“no, it’s 1% IVT”
My vendor is MRC-accredited
My vendor is MRC-accredited, too!

marketing.science
How Marketers Use
Analytics to Reduce
Fraud

marketing.science
Progressively clean campaigns
Obvious fraud still gets through; analyze and turn off the fraud
Launch Week 3
and
beyond
Week 2
Initial baseline
measurement
Measurement after
first optimization
After turning off more “sites
that cheat”
30%
bots 15%
bots 3%
bots
Stacked percent chart
Blue (human)
Red (bots)

marketing.science
Domains and Apps to Remove
Domains Apps
worldstarhiphop.com es.socialpoint.DragonCity
indianexpress.com es.socialpoint.MonsterLegends
beachraider.com com.codigames.idle.tv.empire.tycoon
yummytummyaarthi.com com.vip.hyperpusher
petswelcome.com com.codigames.idle.prison.empire.manager
.tycoon
discoverlifestyle.com es.socialpoint.MonsterLegends
mygcvisa.com scratch.lucky.money.free.real.big.win
zeebiz.com com.pixel.art.coloring.color.number
myleaderpaper.com com.mars.avgchapters
thecinemaholic.com com.productmadness.cashmancasino
segmentnext.com com.taggedapp

marketing.science
Check Location Targeting
Geolocation patterns reveal data centers vs humans

marketing.science
How Publishers Use
Analytics to Show Low Fraud

marketing.science
Good publishers protect advertisers
On-Site measurement,
bots are still coming
In-Ad measurement, bots
and data centers filtered
11% red
-9% (filtered GIVT
and data centers)
2% red
“Filter data center traffic and not call the
ads”

marketing.science
Good publishers protect users
42 trackers
24.3s load time
8 trackers
1.3s load time
“minimize 3rd party javascript trackers on pages”

marketing.science
Good publishers protect themselves
Yellow: search crawlers
Orange: declared bots
Red: malicious bots

marketing.science
Where do visitors click?
Click patterns on desktop and mobile screens, vs bots

marketing.science
March 2021

marketing.science
About the Author
Augustine Fou, PhD.
acfou [@] mktsci.com

marketing.science
Dr. Augustine Fou
2013
2014
2016
2015
2017
2019
2018
2020
2021

marketing.science
Harvard Business Review – October 2015
Excerpt:
Hunting the Bots
Fou, a prodigy who earned a Ph.D. from MIT at
23, belongs to the generation that witnessed
the rise of digital marketers, having crafted his
trade at American Express, one of the most
successful American consumer brands, and at
Omnicom, one of the largest global advertising
agencies. Eventually stepping away from
corporate life, Fou started his own practice,
focusing on digital marketing fraud
investigation.
Fou’s experiment proved that fake traffic is
unproductive traffic. The fake visitors inflated
the traffic statistics but contributed nothing to
conversions, which stayed steady even after the
traffic plummeted (bottom chart). Fake traffic is
generated by “bad-guy bots.” A bot is computer
code that runs automated tasks.

marketing.science
Dr. Augustine Fou
176 Articles for Forbes CMO Network
https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou
254 LinkedIn Articles on Ad Fraud and Digital Marketing
https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/augustinefou
778 Slide Decks on Ad Fraud and Digital Marketing
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/presentations
Taught digital marketing at New York University and Rutgers
University Center for Management Development

2021 update on ad fraud brand safety privacy

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2021 update on ad fraud brand safety privacy