Ad Network Vizi Catches Publisher’s Ad Serving Fraud on Video
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March 27, 2009 – 3:09 pm
After complaints about malware and pornographic ads on its network, Vizi came out with a video yesterday which addresses publisher fraud. As you may recall, Vizi claims that ad network Oridian was serving unwanted pornographic ads via the Right Media Exchange, but has since cut Oridian loose from its network chain.
Ad Operations Online's Otilia Otlacan has chronicled the ongoing drama as her company's site has been on the receiving end of the destructive and/or embarassing ads.
Perhaps the last website you'd want to anger is a site devoted to ad operations.
Anyway, Vizi is now changing the discussion to publisher fraud with a compelling video on how advertisers or ad networks can get ripped off. Vizi CEO Pessach Latin notes in the press release:
This is the first time any major network has shown examples of catching major fraud on their network and come out to attack and take on advertising fraud directly. After noticing that the publisher was committing fraud for a few days, Lattin decided to take steps to track and monitor this and several other questionable publishers until he had the evidence to show exactly what was happening.
MikeOnAds posted the video (which is below) and commenters, as well as Mike(OnAds) Nolet, noted that this could potentially prove difficult to catch with a bit of misdirection:
"... it’s not hard to get a little smarter here — but what if my javascript randomly loaded from one of 200 ad tags? Now you generate 1-3 views per tag on a single 300×250. Would your adserver be able to identify these 3 requests as fraud?"
To view the video with the alleged hundreds, if not, thousands of requests, click below:
Another commenter notes that this may lead to media campaigns becoming CPA versus CPM. - Actually, they already are CPA for the most part even if they are getting bought CPM. With proper attribution along all segments of the advertising supply chain a central part to the ad exchange of the future, CPA tied to ROI will be any ad campaign's success metric.
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March 27, 2009 – 3:09 pm
2 Responses to “Ad Network Vizi Catches Publisher’s Ad Serving Fraud on Video”
It's great that Vizi is sharing this information, but I'd like to see them go one step further and publish the offending publisher & VURL, ensuring that everyone else could ban the pub. Impression fraud exists because information is kept siloed, and the same publisher moves from network to network.
By sharing information and banning bad actors quickly, we'll reduce the profit motive for everyone in the system, which will drive more return to the right sites & networks.
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Rob Leathern Reply:
July 12th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
I agree with Tim - I think it would be great to create a blacklist and standardized procedures for tackling these issues. As an industry we need to get together on this. There's way too much siloing of this information.
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By Tim Ogilvie on Mar 28, 2009