It turns out that 25% of online advertisements are supported by camouflage / fraud

ByMike O'Dowd

Business model by online advertisement such as Google Adsense has been emerging as media actively advances online, but it is becoming clear that there is a situation that is likely to jeopardize the mechanism from the ground up I will.

Fake Traffic Is Causing a Crisis for Advertisers | Adweek
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/amount-questionable-online-traffic-will-blow-your-mind-153083?page=1

Do media planning and consultation projectsCaratLindsay Buescher, senior manager and analyst,Article about a company called FreeStreams.comI saw it. In the article, it explains the mechanism (illegally) to guide (illegally) to the FreeStream website without knowing the user by an invisible tag embedded in the page, and how Buescher's client Red Bull also advertises FreeStreams I discovered that it is the Lord.

In such a site, "blank banner invisible" by "iframe" tag is embedded in the blank part of the page, and if you carelessly click on that place popup will open and advertisement will be displayed I am. In many cases, it is closed by the user so that it will not be seen, so it is a method that can be taken as a fraud for advertiser companies that actually advertise (paying money).

ByDon Hankins

After three weeks of survey, Carat has listed 77 websites on its company's blacklist as a result of conducting similar fraudulent acts and submitted it to Red Bull for 150,000 We voluntarily refunded the dollar (about 14.7 million yen). Regarding this matter, Buescher says, "Red Bull pays 90% of the online advertising budget directly to the advertising media, so what if the media really does not exist?"

Today, online advertisements are faced with the crisis that "inflating traffic", "fictitious site", "visitor creation" etc. are spreading. Based on information from multiple sources, such impersonation of traffic volume is essentially part of the online advertising system, and apart from whether it is intentional or not, many large companies also incorporate into this system It is said that it has been done. Alan Silverberg, director of media platform for Moxie Interactive, said, "Companies such as AOL, Yahoo, and Facebook are involved in more or less, I can not stop it," he talks about the depth of root.

Medialink's chief sales officer, Wenda Millard,One quarter of the online advertising market is fraudulent"The value lost by fraud is equivalent to 25% of the digital advertising market, which is said to be 30 billion dollars (about 2.94 trillion yen), which is golden frown by fraudsters."

◆ Inflate traffic and access count
According to the Web traffic analysis team, on condition of anonymity,Break.comYaCollegeHumor,Complex,Crackle,Entrepreneur,Total BeautyThere is a suspicious traffic pattern on the site such as. In the same teamComScoreWe analyzed on the basis of company data and found that many of the access to the site of each company was also accessing the site where fake traffic collects.

ByJamie Beverly

In addition, according to a Web traffic analysis professional which refused to publish by "confidentiality agreement" also, I admit that there is a doubt about the traffic volume itself of those sites. Companies that conduct traffic surveys have few data such as "number of unique users" and "number of times of viewing" obtained from each media, because they are suspected to be inflated due to the type of bots automatically crawling the web is being used Work is being done to adjust to each client after adjustment.

Ben Edelman, associate professor at Harvard University who conducts research on the structure of the Internet, advertisement, traffic pattern and fraud detection, has developed a program (crawler) to detect activity showing "interesting" movement. By using this patented crawler, Edelman has a system in which sites such as Crackle, College Humor, and Break use "invisible traffic" and appear to appear to have increased visitors I found out that there is.


According to Edelman 's clarification, the Break method is as follows. When you visit the website, Break uses secretly reading another site using multiple methods to make it appear as if the number of accesses has increased. For example,Ptp 22Companies that redirect traffic to Break, until the actual site is displayed,MarketwithmogulYaTooShockingIt is loading the site such as. In the meantime, advertisements will never be seen by users. 25% of the sources of access to Break are ClickSure, which is said to sell traffic. Edelman commented on this subject: "Users who visited the site never saw these ads, including ads from AT & T company."

Separately Edelman revealed that 18% of Crackle's traffic owned by SONY also has a trace of fraud, according to a source closer to the site, "From traffic sources It is organizing, but there are cases where the previous one has been left. " Also, CollegeHumor has recognized the same problem, and he is starting efforts to solve it.

◆ The way to problem solving
However, even if we make various efforts, this problem may always exist. John Snyder, CEO of Grapeshot, sometimes sometimes says "There are more clicks on my competitors, but it is often due to camouflage." However, It is also true that optimization algorithms collect clicks. "

DigilantNate Woodman, COO of the company, said, "The more you tighten the clothing, our performance will decline.It is a fact that there is a return for making advertisement buyers progress, and the media side wants money There are times when I close my eyes, "he talks about the depth of the roots. "However, as industry it has to improve this point, someone has to do it"

ByThewebprincess

Its task isIABThe company may be responsible for it. The company's Per Sullivan is working on the development of industry standards. "If the advertising buyer says" We only buy from certified vendors ", the industry will change." Mr. Buescher of Carat thinks that a more drastic step is needed and we are also strongly seeking a change for the peers. "It is a shame that there is no one who will solve the problem in this industry, we must protect ourselves ourselves until it appears."