This week's review of ad fraud and quality in the digital advertising space.
Digiday reports that few publishers "feel empowered to publicly name any supply-side platform that lets in large volumes of fraudulent inventory to their platforms...." Digiday notes that lawsuit potenetial and confidentially clauses are primary factors, but adds, "Others don’t believe contractual agreements should be binding when it comes to an issue as great as fraud."
"For the first time, a malicious Android application built with Kotlin has been discovered in the Google Play store," reported Tech Republic, citing Trend Micro research. "According to the Trend Micro blog post, the malicious app is masquerading as an Android device cleaning and optimization tool called Swift Cleaner," wrote Tech Republic. "Once downloaded, it can perform many nefarious activities, including sending SMS messages on behalf of the user, remotely executing code, stealing data, forwarding URLs, and click ad fraud," the article added.
AdExchanger reports on an ad fraud attack impacting e-commerce sites. AdExchanger explains it as a "devious form of ad injection only visible to infected site visitors," and calls it "journey hacking." The malware "entices users to click on unauthorized product ads and links that whisk them away from their original destination to other sites," per AdExchanger, and is only visible to visitors who have an infected device.
A new blog post from Pixalate "explains X-Forwarded-For (XFF) and the best practices as it relates to detecting, targeting and even blocking the IP addresses associated with programmatic advertising transactions to reduce ad fraud and improve quality. This is a common issue digital marketers encounter, but it’s one that remains a mystery to many in the industry."
A ClickZ article spells out five reasons CMOs should get behind ads.txt, noting that domain spoofing is a legitimate concern and that ads.txt is a simple solution. The article also cites Pixalate research which reveals that large publishers are embracing ads.txt, and contends that the initiative will "promote transparency in the digital ad ecosystem."
Sign up for our blog to stay updated with new stats, trends, and analysis on digital ad fraud.
