Digital ad fraud on the rise

David Sendroff, CEO of Forensiq, a digital ad fraud detection service predicts that marketers can expect fraud to rise in a proportional amount during 2016. Factors influencing this rise in ad fraud range from native viewability support by browsers, the popularity of ad-blocking tools, and demand for more mobile inventory, viewable CPMs, to new Media Rating Council (MRC) guidelines. More sophisticated tactics are forecast to be used by fraudsters in 2016, which could include ad injection, device emulation, and fraudulent apps. Bots will also need to try to reduce their footprint in order to keep themselves under the radar. Marketers are warned about branching into the riskier sectors of IoT-enabled devices and smart TVs. The MRC is poised to introduce new standards to aid better industry regulation, in response to this increasing risk of digital ad fraud. A new tag initiative will raise the barriers to entry in the marketplace by assigning an ID to every ad, which will show its point of origin, and allow fraud to be more easily identified.

by Ben Frederick @mp_benfred, December 7, 2015

Digital ad fraud made big waves this year when it was revealed that more than $8 billion of ad spend was being wasted. The IAB says that about 28% of that spend happened on mobile. So what’s to come in 2016?

Marketers can expect fraud to rise a proportional amount to spend in 2016, says digital ad fraud detection firm Forensiq CEO David Sendroff.

Forensiq predicts that several major factors will influence fraud next year, including native viewability support by browsers, the proliferation of ad blockers, demand for more mobile inventory, viewable CPMs, and new Media Rating Council guidelines.

Fraud is only ever as sophisticated as the measuring methods used to detect it.

According to Forensiq, the tactics that we see fraudsters using today will fall out of favor and more sophisticated tactics will become the norm in 2016.

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New tactics include ad injection, device emulation, and fraudulent apps. Bots will also have to attempt to reduce their footprint in order to keep themselves under the radar.

“Attention has become a currency in online advertising,” says Sendroff. High volumes of ads are leveraged onto compromised devices and consumer “attention becomes diluted by all the ads. There’s no real value on all those ads.”

Forensiq sees the future proliferation of IoT-enabled devices and smart TVs as ripe for fraud. Marketers are cautioned when looking to branch into that sector.

Part of the problem with fraud is that it benefits so many different people at different layers of the market, “It [fraud] rolls up through the ad networks,” says Sendroff. There are enough people between a piece of corrupt data and a false ad impression served that any one of them could be held accountable.

Fortunately, new standards are expected from the MRC will help to standardize the industry somewhat.

When regulating a digital marketplace, “you have to use both the carrot and the stick,” says Sendroff. “The carrot is client retention and increased payouts and that sort of thing. The stick will come into play with things like the tag initiative.”

The tag initiative is a means of raising the barriers to entry in the marketplace by assigning an ID to every ad showing its point of origin, a move that would allow fraud to be easily identified.