Spectrum recently released a Brand Safety Guide which underscored the degree to which advertisers need to prevent ad fraud and protect their ad spend. According to their guide, on average in 2020, (a year where consumers were spending more time online and at home), small and medium-sized businesses lost almost $15,000 annually on ad impressions that were never seen by actual people. For agencies and their clients during the same period, ad spend losses reached $207,000 annually which was 10 times the amount of Server Message Blocks (SMB) according to PPC Global Click Fraud Report of 2020-2-21.
The types of ad fraud are staggering. Most are primarily IVT (Invalid traffic) which can include bots and other non-human interaction. There are bots which are viruses that drive up useless traffic, domain spoofing where lower quality inventory can be passed off to unsafe or low-quality websites, pixel stuffing and ad stacking which makes ads unviewable, location fraud which feeds ads in undesired regions, cookie stuffing and user-agent spoofing.
For Norris, one of the most pernicious is, “the misrepresentation of inventory. Low quality or short-form inventory is passed as high quality or long-form inventory, and mobile experience is passed as CTV because they are both OTT channels.” Premium inventory is easy to define. “Premium inventory is inventory that is sourced from Spectrum Reach’s brand strategy and marketing,” Norris explained, and added, “It is verified by a third party on the back end to ensure that it ran where they say it ran, that it was seen by a real person, and is optimized towards supply quality metrics such as measurability, viewability, and runs in a brand-safe environment.” This inventory is culled from Spectrum’s premium pool of inventory consisting of owned and operated properties, direct deals, carriage agreements, and partner relationships. This ensures no inventory is being aggregated blindly from indirect marketplaces or open exchanges.
To fully address ad fraud, Spectrum partnered with Moat which is a neutral third-party verification company who, Norris noted, “looks ‘under the hood’ at 100% of the inventory flowing through our system. They will confirm that it was seen by real people, that it’s not bot traffic, that there is no malware and it’s in brand safe content.” In this way, Spectrum does not grade its own homework and relies on a trusted, MRC accredited partner for an external audient of their campaigns.
The decision to go with Moat was a careful process. Bill Sheahan, Vice President of Product management for Spectum, noted that his company, “was in search of a media verification partner with specific capabilities that aligned with its overall goal of providing a brand-safe environment for its advertisers; one that verified that ads indeed reached their intended audience on trusted programming.” Several vendors were vetted to insure that vetting could be conducted across all platforms including CTV, mobile applications and web. “Spectrum Reach ultimately selected Oracle Moat Analytics for their superior technology, service and forward-thinking roadmap. Moat allows us to measure and verify all of our inventory and proactively flag any IVT before it propagates across our streaming ecosystem. As an MRC accredited partner, they are investing in sophisticated detection capabilities that allow us to stay one step ahead of some of the bad actors that are trying to infiltrate our supply chain,” he stated.
In addition to Moat, Spectrum is also the first local media sales organization to become a TAG Platinum member. “The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is the leading global initiative fighting criminal activity and increasing trust in the digital advertising industry. TAG advances its mission by connecting industry leaders, analyzing threats, and sharing best practices worldwide,” Sheahan noted. This group was created by the 4As, the ANA and the IAB to work collaboratively with companies throughout the digital ad supply chain. “TAG member companies that receive all of TAG's available seals (now just 3 – Brand Safety, Ad Fraud, and Malware) achieve the coveted Platinum Member status. These certifications require in-depth application process as well as third-party audits to ensure they meet ongoing requirements for each particular seal,” he added.
Spectrum’s Brand Safety guide recommends the following actions to prevent ad fraud:
1. Pick trustworthy partners with good reputations in the industry and use best practices to insure that ad campaigns are free of all types of fraud.
2. Verify ads using an accredited third party verification partner to be sure your ad inventory, delivery to the advertiser and ad dollars are kept to the highest quality.
3. Demand transparency from your marketing efforts. Ask to understand how the technology
works, what makes their inventory premium, where your ads are running, and who is seeing them.
And yet, with all of this effort, the industry’s efforts to combat ad fraud are in early stages. “We are still at a point where we are educating our advertisers about ad fraud, that it exists, and what we are doing to protect them. I believe it has increased trust between our company and our advertisers because we are educating them on the ecosystem while also providing them with a solution,” Norris explained.
Fortunately, Spectrum’s ad fraud initiative is well timed. “In the next 2 years, we expect ad fraud to become more sophisticated as more industry players put an emphasis on fighting anti-fraud and weeding out the low-hanging fruit with tools and processes that will drive bad actors further into the shadows,” Sheahan concluded.
This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
Artwork by Charlene Weisler
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