Online Ad Fraud? You Must Be Joking
July 25, 2017
Years ago a New York conference organizer who specialized in early morning breakfast meetings asked me, “Will you do an exposé about online advertising fraud?” My response to this question was, “No.”
Why did I drag my feet? Three reasons:
In the research for my first Google book “The Google Legacy,” which is now out of print but I sell pre-publication versions 13 years after I wrote it, I realized that online ads were easy to manipulate. Here’s one example. Write a script which visits a page and clicks on an ad. The poor advertiser’s account can be consumed in a nonce. No one paid much attention to this “feature,” and I had zero desire to get involved with ad types. Who wanted hassles when I was still working? Not me.
Second, explaining the who, what, why, and how involved imparting technical information to decidedly non tech type people. Sorry, that’s not for me. Leave that work to those who have the patience and personality to deal with jazzed Madison Avenue types.
Third, none of my contacts wanted to reveal that click fraud was a problem. The approach was similar to the memorable statement, “Android fragmentation? There’s no Android fragmentation.” Yeah, right.
Now there are some brave souls stepping forward in what may become a darned interesting interpersonal, intercompany, and legal battle. This possible dust up is one which I will watch far from the fray.,
To get a sense of what’s about the become either “real” or “fake” news, navigate to “Online Ad Fraud Is a Widespread Problem, Google and Other Big Ad Platforms Admit.” Now the “big” online ad platforms boil down to a two horse race. I suppose the smaller folks like the vendors of annoying weird links, annoying pop ups, and looped videos with raucous sound tracks may be keeping some secrets under a rock, there are people who just want to see those online ad accounts depleted by a software robot. Click, click, click, and the pre paid ad accounts goes down, down, down.
The write up points out:
Google-run tests found evidence of fake ad spaces sold on Google and Oath-owned programmatic ad platforms, as well as well as on PubMatic and AppNexus.
The point, I think, is that the vendors of online ads want to “prove” and “remove doubt” that online ads work. One should keep in mind that almost everything online is an ad. Amazon, for example, is one giant Sears catalog with manufacturers and sellers desperate for positive reviews and placement on the first page of Amazon’s result pages. Do you every look at page 14 when searching for cufflinks which hide USB drives?
The write up focuses on spoofing, offering:
The method is used to trick ad buyers into purchasing advertising space on websites that don’t exist, or that the sellers don’t have access to. Because of the speed and volume of advertising online when bought programmatically, it’s virtually impossible to check if an ad ran where sellers say it was supposed to run.
As long ago as 2003, i noticed that there are many ways and many reasons for fiddling with online ads.
Perhaps Facebook and Google, among others, will share their knowledge, concerns, and ideas. The thrill of losing ad revenue should make for some interesting PR and, possibly, legal activity.
Stephen E Arnold, July 25, 2017
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