Fighting the digital advertising criminals
Make no mistake, there is an arms race underway between those who are truly committed to fighting ad fraud and those who want to profit from it, writes Rubicon Project’s James Brown
A recent study by the Association of National Advertisers estimated that advertisers could waste almost £6 billion this year on ads no people will ever see. Users may have little idea their browsers have been infected, since the webpages can be loaded in the background without them noticing.
A debate about ad fraud can quickly become a complex one, but one single truth remains and it is that ads that are served to invalid sources are never seen by a real person and therefore have zero chance of delivering any impact. This fact alone confirms to me that it is high time we take on ad fraud as an industry issue.
But you may not know just how much this impacts every other performance and effectiveness metric our industry uses to demonstrate success. ComScore recently released a report: “Non-Human Traffic: Why it Matters and Why You Should Care“.
As a founding participant of the industry certification program helping to stamp out ad fraud “Certified Against Fraud”, Rubicon Project is 100% committed to cleaning up the digital advertising industry with the aim of ultimately eradicating all criminal activity. A tall order you might say, but every dollar spent on a fraudulent ad is a dollar that is stolen from marketers’ already over-stretched budgets.
As a cross-industry initiative, which was set up by The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), the program strives to fight criminal activity in the digital advertising supply chain and in particular digital ad fraud. Under the program, TAG rewards ad buyers, sellers and intermediaries who comply with a rigorous set of guidelines with a “Certified Against Fraud” seal of approval, recognising their commitment to protect those in the industry against fraud.
TAG registered companies are verified as legitimate participants through a proprietary background check and review process operated by Dun & Bradstreet. They are awarded a TAG-ID, which is a unique global identifier that they can share with partners and append to their ads or the ad inventory they sell.
All of these measures are designed to help protect us against those who want to rip off this industry of ours, which is reducing marketers’ ability to reach their intended targets, diminishing the effectiveness of their campaigns and ultimately hurting ROI.
If we work together, we can ensure that marketing resources support business goals, not fund the lavish lifestyles of the criminals and the fraudsters.
Most of the major advertising agencies have been instrumental in supporting anti-fraud efforts to protect their clients’ investments. They now include a common sense requirement in vendor agreements that their digital advertising partner also has the TAG anti-fraud seal.
Everyone who plays a relevant role in digital advertising should apply for this seal, so we can take aggressive action against the criminals who are undermining our industry.
We have dealt directly and swiftly with issues of fraud and quality over the years and have a long-standing commitment to inventory quality and pushing low-quality inventory out of our own platform.
We support the growth of a clean, well-lit high quality advertising marketplace by establishing transparent quality systems and processes that have helped to block billions of bad ad impressions from ever entering the marketplace. For instance, using pre-bid filters to help identify high-quality inventory in programmatic exchanges can help marketers reach real people, no matter how they connect.
Make no mistake, there is an arms race underway between those who are truly committed to fighting ad fraud and those who want to profit from it. Now we have a clear and simple way to identify those in the industry who are truly committed to fighting fraud, marketers know who the good guys are that they can trust to deliver value and ROI on every ad dollar they spend.
Our job is to educate advertisers, publishers, and agencies on the technical aspects of fighting digital ad fraud so we can improve the effectiveness of digital advertising for the good of the industry.
James Brown is managing director UK, Rubicon Project