Zach Edwards has had a long, winding journey through ad tech.
He started out in online advertising spending large sums on behalf of the Barack Obama campaign and over the years has worked on ad fraud and cybersecurity threats that run the gamut.
Edwards was there in the early days of ad tech identity collaboration (anyone remember the AppNexus-backed Advertising ID Consortium?) and since has collaborated with the FBI, the DOJ and practically every other law enforcement body that’s been trying to understand the flows of money and data online.
Today, Edwards is senior manager for threat insights at Human (formerly White Ops), which he joined a year ago.
Although much of the low-hanging ad fraud fruit has been eradicated – though there are still bad actors afoot – the multi-million-dollar fraud schemes that continue operate today have upped their game.
And while programmatic advertising may not be the lawless Wild West of 10 years ago, it still leans toward lawlessness.
In this episode, we’ll take a walk down memory lane to see how much progress the online ad industry has made when it comes to basic privacy and security measures.
For a jaded veteran of many tours of duty in the programmatic trenches, Edwards is actually optimistic about where the industry is headed now.
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