This week's review of ad fraud and quality in the digital advertising space.
1: 'Massive spying' from Google Chrome extensions
"A newly discovered spyware effort attacked users through 32 million downloads of extensions to Google’s market-leading Chrome web browser," reported Reuters, citing research from Awake Security. Reuters added that the news highlights "the tech industry’s failure to protect browsers as they are used more for email, payroll and other sensitive functions."
2. Apple could get rid of IDFA
"Ad-tech sources fear Apple will pull the primary means of mobile ad tracking next week," reported Adweek. "[S]ources with insight into the organization’s thinking suggest any pending update may not be ruinous even though they expect policy changes would inhibit the status quo of in-app advertising."
3. IAB Tech Lab ends DigiTrust
"IAB Tech Lab has announced it is shutting down DigiTrust, one of the forerunners to the various contemporary industry initiatives where ad-tech vendors collaborate to reduce the need for hundreds of software, or cookie, syncs any time an ad-supported webpage loads," reported Adweek.
4. Report: Almost one-third of online ad traffic in China is IVT
"Nearly a third of all online ad traffic in China last year was fake or invalid and cost the marketing industry an estimated 28 billion RMB, a study by advertising technology company Miaozhen Systems has found," reported WARC.
5. How an agency is preparing for a cookieless future
Agencies must now prepare for the end of the cookie, wrote AdExchanger in a case study examining how Digitas is doing just that. Per the article, Digitas is encouraging clients to think about ways to organize and use their own first-party data.
"[Digitas' SVP & Head of Precision Media Liane] Nadeau feels strongly that brands need to be the stewards of their own data," wrote AdExchanger. "Agencies like ours are absolutely able to support them, but at the end of the day, brands need to own their data," Nadeau said to AdExchanger.
