Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Blockchain Fever While still buzzy, advertisers are starting to test blockchain as a tool that can shine a light on the digital supply chain. Marketers such as AB InBev, AT&T, Kellogg’s, Bayer and Nestle are using the technology to measure the flow of their […]
Purch, publisher of LiveScience and TopTenReviews, added three layers of defense to its anti-fraud system in October. In addition to pre-screening for bots twice, Purch now detects bots, malware and ad quality in real time. “Better-quality traffic means higher ad performance and higher CPMs,” said Purch CTO John Potter. “This is a trend. Demand sources […]
Bots are to web traffic what broken turnstiles are to amusement parks – they make it impossible to get an accurate read on how many people are coming through the door, and that messes with optimization. But at least in the case of a physical location, the visitors are human. On Thursday, bot detection company Distil […]
Blood in the water brings sharks, and high CPMs bring bots. And political spenders, who often outbid brands on targeted inventory, are uniquely vulnerable to digital fraud and bots. “All the ingredients that typically happen for fraud are a part of the political marketplace,” said Mark Schlosser, senior sales director at the ad fraud security […]
The messenger app Kik, a chat service catering to teens, debuted its Bot Shop on Monday. The shop lets Kik users download chatbots – automated apps meant to simulate real conversation. The shop currently features 16 bots from companies like Vine, H&M, Funny or Die, The Weather Channel and J-14 (a celebrity mag geared toward […]
The digital supply chain is a morass and is losing the advertising industry about $8.2 billion a year, according to a joint study released Tuesday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Ernst & Young. The price tag includes losses and waste due to piracy, malware and invalid traffic, a trifecta that comprises what EY partner […]
Bots are slipping through the cracks. Digital security company Are You a Human claims to have identified a number of bots for sale in traffic that’s already been filtered by well-known verification companies. “The bots we saw through ad units were both on the open exchange and through direct DSP relationships,” said Reid Tatoris, COO […]
Some bots are good, but most bots are not – and Distil Networks, which announced $21 million in Series B on Tuesday, has its eye on the latter. The round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with pinch hitting from Foundry, TechStars, ff Venture Capital, Idea Fund and Correlation Ventures, brings Distil’s total funding to $38 million. […]
The rise of automation has made the ad-buying and selling process more informed and efficient, but it’s also provided an outlet for fraudsters to profit. After all, if machines conduct more transactions that used to take place between two humans over the phone, there’s less human oversight. Additionally, ad ops teams, excited by the […]
This is the seventh in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include Moat, Telemetry, Sizmek, comScore and Asia RTB. Read previous interviews with DoubleVerify, Forensiq, Integral Ad Science, PubChecker, Videology and White Ops. The battle against botnets is ongoing. Ad tech firm Dstillery […]
