The document discusses the issues of supply quality, fraud, and brand safety in digital advertising. It notes that ad fraud will cost an estimated $16.4 billion in 2017 and that nearly 20% of digital ad spending in 2016 was "wasted". The document outlines the types of fraud like invalid traffic and domain spoofing. It emphasizes the importance of managing inventory quality through strategies like working with supply partners that enforce transparency and have fraud policies. The document also stresses managing brand safety by defining what is safe for brands, using contextual tools, and having protocols to address brand association questions.

1. LEWIS ROTHKOPF
G e n e r a l M a n a g e r, S u p p l y
M E D I A M AT H
THE FUTURE OF SUPPLY
BRAND SAFETY AND INVENTORY QUALITY

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Agenda
What’s Going On?
What is the Size and Scope?
How Are Marketers & Publishers Getting Defrauded?
Back to the Future
How are DSPs Approaching Supply?
Cleaning Up the Supply Chain
Wrap-Up, Q&A

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Rude Awakening
16.4
BILLION
Ad Fraud will
cost marketers
this year
20%
Nearly
of digital ad
spend “wasted”
in 2016
29%
Of programmatic
spend in 2016
suspected of
running on
invalid traffic
12%
of direct-to-
publisher
budgets
potentially ran
on bad traffic
Source: The&Partnership via CNBC, “Businesses could lose $16.4 billion to online advertising fraud in 2017: Report,” 4/13/2016

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Rude Awakening
Source: CNBC, “Procter & Gamble chief marketer slams ‘crappy media supply chain’, urges marketers to act,” 1/31/17
“We have a media supply chain that is
murky at best and fraudulent at worst.
We need to clean it up, and invest the
time and money we save into better
advertising to drive growth.”
Marc Pritchard,
Procter & Gamble

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What’s Going On?

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Back to the Future
HOW DID WE GET HERE?

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DSP Supply 2007 – 2016: The Idea
Supply 1.0: plug into every pool of supply in
the world, and let the algorithms sort it out!
A spaghetti bowl of inventory that cuts
across media types, with broad ranges of
quality and effectiveness throughout, along
with multiple access points
And who doesn’t love spaghetti?! One big,
delicious silo to solve all marketer needs.
Right?

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DSP Supply 2007 – 2016: The Reality
The problems emerged almost from the
beginning: too much supply to make sense of.
Discoverability nearly impossible. Quality and
safety in question. Duplicative bid opportunities
abound. Pricing massively inefficient
The first solution – PMPs – are tough to wrangle,
scale and instrument. Assortment of verification
companies sprout with no established standard
Marketers clamor for a way to make sense of the
world’s addressable supply at scale

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And then Header Bidding happened…
… and the problems we just discussed got 5-10x worse.
• Massive duplication in bid requests
(because now the cost for publishers to
call 10+ demand sources is trivial)
• With Header Bidding being
predominately First Price, increased risk
of buyers overpaying for supply
• Dramatically increased scale means even
less clarity into inventory differentiation
and quality

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Types of Fraud
Two main types of fraud that we focus on killing:
Invalid Traffic/
Click Fraud
Domain
Spoofing

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Invalid Traffic
• Also known as non-human traffic
• That’s a bit of a misnomer, because humans
can also generate invalid traffic
• Typically attracted to CPC or cost-per lead
campaigns, also “purchased traffic”
• Whether bots or humans, malicious invalid
traffic is fraudulent, wastes marketer spend,
paints an ugly picture of the publisher, and
erodes confidence in the entire ecosystem

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Counterfeit or Spoofed Domains
• Simply put, representing a bid request as
coming from a site or app that it is not
• For instance, sending the URL as
www.globo.com when it is actually a low-
quality, possibly brand-unsafe site
• RTB standards are unfortunately susceptible
to this type of fraud
• ADS.TXT is one solution
• Marketers should be incredibly wary of
“discounted” supply

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Looking Ahead
BRAND SAFETY

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What is Brand Unsafe?
“DoubleVerify has
blocked 8 million ads
from appearing on content pages classified
as hate speech
– up threefold since January.“
Source: AdExchanger, “Brand Safety is an Old Problem and It’s Getting Worse,” 3/24/17

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Be Aware of What’s Happening

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What is NOT Necessarily Brand Unsafe?
“Fewer advertisers seem to be appearing
on Breitbart, which may be a result of
some ad networks and brand safety
companies blocking it in recent
months, citing hate speech
violations or deeming the content
too inflammatory”
Source: The New York Times, “Brands Try to Blacklist Breitbart, but Ads Slip Through Anyway,” 3/26/2017

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But Avoid Becoming Politically Charged
Don’t conflate hate speech with unsavory political
speech
Blocking legitimate content could have the opposite
effect of drawing more attention
Choose tech and suppliers that provide
comprehensive brand management tools and safety
controls
Source: The New York Times, “Brands Try to Blacklist Breitbart, but Ads Slip Through Anyway,” 3/26/2017

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How Do We Fix It?
MANAGING INVENTORY QUALITY

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Managing Inventory Quality
Work with a DSP that enforces a clean,
transparent supply chain, and that does
not tolerate downstream fraud

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MediaMath’s Fraud Strike Policy
Strike # Notification Procedures Length of Deal Deactivation
Requirements for Deal
Reinstatement
Strike 1 (Deal ID is above
suspicious traffic threshold
for 30 day time period)
Notification of deal
deactivation by MediaMath
supply team
2 Week Deal Deactivation
Detailed explanation of what
was done to mitigate/reduce
suspicious traffic numbers
Strike 2 (Deal ID is above
suspicious traffic threshold
for 30 day time period)
Notification of deal
deactivation by MediaMath
supply team
4 Week Deal Deactivation
Detailed explanation of what
was done to mitigate/reduce
suspicious traffic numbers
Strike 3 (Deal ID is above
suspicious traffic threshold
for 30 day time period)
Notification of indefinite deal
deactivation by MediaMath
supply team and any
implications on Open Exchange
supply
Deal Indefinitely Deactivated
Implications of open exchange
disablement given spend level
and suspicious traffic

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Managing Inventory Quality
Consider running against an approved
whitelist, or determine whether a universal
blacklist is in place for your protection

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Managing Inventory Quality
Stay away from sites and apps that are
known for “buying traffic”

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Managing Inventory Quality
Consider working with a third party
verification vendor, ideally in prebid

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Managing Inventory Quality
Migrate away from inaccurate, easily
fooled proxy metrics like CTR and video
completes and towards real metrics that
can’t be easily faked – for instance, things
like sales, test drives, foot traffic

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Managing Inventory Quality
Ask whether your media sources are
leveraging the IAB’s ads.txt initiative

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How Do We Fix It?
MANAGING BRAND SAFETY

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Managing Brand Safety
Define what is and is not
considered safe for your brand

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Managing Brand Safety
Consider working with a contextual
categorization vendor in prebid

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Managing Brand Safety
Establish a protocol for addressing
brand association questions from
consumers and pressure groups

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Managing Brand Safety
Know your seller: understand who
owns the media on which your
campaigns are running

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Summary
✓ Inventory Quality and Brand Safety are separate and equally
important areas to master
✓ Fraudsters are constantly at work, looking for increasingly
sophisticated ways to “fake” organic activity
✓ Marketers should fully understand where their supply is coming
from, and ensure that their buying platforms are protecting them
✓ Publishers should be very wary of buying traffic, and should
understand that the buy-side has no remaining patience for
downstream fraud
✓ Companies should define what is “safe” for their brand, and
should ensure that technology, relationships and communications
plans are in place to manage brand safety emergencies

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OBRIGADO!