This whitepaper discusses the growing issue of ad fraud in digital advertising and outlines 9mediaonline's strategies to combat it. Ad fraud includes activities like malware, invalid traffic, and ad blocking, which collectively threaten the integrity of online advertising and the revenue of publishers. 9mediaonline emphasizes the need for transparent practices, robust technology, and collaboration across the industry to address these challenges effectively.

1. AD Fraudulent is a growing issue
globally. This whitepaper aims at briefly
educating you about the issues
prevalent in the industry and 9MO’s
steps towards tackling this issue.
Tackling AD
Fraud in
2016
9Mediaonline’s objective
to tackle the issue largely
9MediaOnline

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CONTENTS
Tackling AD Fraud in 2016..........................................................................................................................2
How Big is the Problem? .........................................................................................................................3
Rise of Ad Blocking..................................................................................................................................4
What forms does AD Fraud take?.........................................................................................................5
Programmatic Buy...............................................................................................................................6
9MO’s roadmap to tackle AD Fraud........................................................................................................7

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SUMMARY
AD Fraudulent activities have been prevalent since the inception of Digital Advertising. The
typical activities include Malware, infringed content and invalid traffic.
AD Bots defeat user targeting:
Bots are small programs usually hosted in unsuspecting user’s computers that can perform
various activities on the internet. Bots hijack browsers to masquerade as real users, blend in with
human traffic, and generate more revenue.
AD Blocking – Growing Threat:
Even bigger a threat is AD blockers or AD Blocking software or similar plugins that the industry is
increasingly facing. We, as a digital media company are working towards reaching more
audiences to ensure good traffic for our advertisers.
9MediaOnline’s Methodology:
9MO, since 2012 has been improving ways to tackle AD Fraudulent activities. One of the key
objectives that has been on top of our list is – AD Viewability.
The different steps to tackle AD Fraudulent and AD Blocking issues have been listed in the
section - 9MO’s roadmap to tackle AD Fraud in page 7.

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TACKLING AD FRAUD IN 2016
In short, AD Fraud is a term that encompasses –
piracy, malware and invalid traffic.
As of Q1 2016, Digital Fraud
industry accounted to $8.2Bn
globally (Source: IAB).
HOW BIG IS THE PROBLEM?
88% of the digital ad clicks seemed fraudulent.
According to the BOT Baseline assessment study led
by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in the US. Other fraudulent activities reported in
the study were
1. Digital publishers lead all industries in bad bot traffic at 32%
2. Bots inflate monetized audience by 5% to 50%
3. Bot traffic is up to 61.5% of all website traffic
4. Just one form of in-app fraud accounts for 13% of all in-app inventory
5. 22% year-on-year growth for fraudulent bot traffic
6. 40% of mobile ad clicks are essentially worthless 10
7. Bot traffic rises for the first time to over 50% of total
8. More than 18% of impressions/clicks come from bots
The issue comes from some of the networks of infected computers or computers used for
fraudulent activity which is known as Botnets. They mimic human activity so it looks as though a
person is “viewing” an ad. Fraudsters can either sell this bot-generated traffic to online publishers
or place digital ads on websites that mostly only viewed by bots.
The longer the growth of ad fraud is allowed to go on, the more difficult countering it becomes.
By 2025 the total global investment on digital media is projected to be within a range of $400
billion to $500 billion16. If just 10% of the upper limit within this range is exposed to ad fraud, this
will be second to physical organized crime market.
Malvertizing $1.1bn
Invalid Traffic
$4.6bn
Infringed Content
$2.5bn

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Ad Fraudulent which is infringed ads, content and video has witnessed a rising trend because of
the rise of Ad Blocking – ad blockers/ ad blocking software.
RISE OF AD BLOCKING
Ad fraud goes hand in hand with some of the other big issues gripping the digital advertising
industry – viewability and ad blocking. ISBA’s director of media and advertising BOB Wootton
said tackling these issues is key to repairing the “fractured relationship between advertisers and
consumers”.
Hornby believes the reaction so far has been too defensive. Google, for example, wrote its own
blog citing how it blocked more than 780 million ads last year for policy violations. The firm also
highlighted how it is “always updating its technology and policies to stay one step ahead of
fraudsters”.
“We have the IAB saying they are doing this, Google saying they have done something else –
they are all saying ‘I’ve done my bit’ rather than coming together to solve the issue.”
The rise of ad blocking is popularly accredited to the increase in brands carrying out campaigns
using programmatic - or automated - advertising technologies, which commonly involves a
business model where advertisers don't have to pay for ads that are not served. Some argue
that ad blocking software actually protects advertisers, as those that install the software were
unlikely to be receptive to any ad that is served to them.
Blocking ads continues to build on the strong growth rates seen during 2014 and 2015.
1. Globally, usage of ad blockers grew by 41% YoY (Q2 2014 - Q2 2015).
2. As of June 2015, there were 198 million monthly active users for the major browser
extensions that block ads.
3. Usage of ad blocking software - Usage of ad blockers in the United States grew by 48%
during the past year, increasing to 45 million average monthly active users in Q2 2015.
4. Cost of blocking ads - Ad block usage in the United States costed $10.7 bn in 2015 and is
expected to grow to $20.3B in 2016.

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Findings:
1. Visitors to gaming websites are significantly more likely to block advertising
2. Visitors to health, charity, and government/legal websites are significantly less likely to
block advertising.
WHAT FORMS DOES AD FRAUD TAKE?
There are three primary forms of ad fraud
1. Website. Can be further split in to websites that are directly under the control of the user
(committer of Ad Fraud) and those that the user is acting as an affiliate for, as is typically
the case in conversion fraud schemes.
2. Platform. Can be anything from a social networking site to a video hosting site. Where
brands are more familiar with platforms, inevitably there is greater trust and less suspicion
of fraud. There is evidence that major platforms have significant issues with ad fraud.
3. Data. This refers to any circumstance where Ad Fraud committers are able to monetize
user data through data marketplaces. There are various ways in which this is practically
21
30
39
54
121
181
JAN-10 JAN-11 JAN-12 JAN-13 JAN-14 JAN-15
Ad Blocking (in $million)
Ad Blocking (in $million)

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executed, but one example is by sending a botnet to visit publisher sites, making these
bots become part of what the publisher would consider to be first party data.
Many publishers use cookies to target audiences and sell ads on sites other than their
own, using audience extension techniques, thereby propagating false impressions across
the web. Additional steps include sending bots to visit advertiser owned sites, qualifying
cookies as an advertisers’ first party data and leaving brand data poisoned.
PROGRAMMATIC BUY
Virtually any programmatic buy can be exposed to AD Fraud; even direct programmatic TV
buys are vulnerable. In websites, the most common types of fraud:
1. Spam Sites: While extensive resources are available for analyzing and blacklisting IP
addresses associated with fraudulent traffic, no similar resources are available for ad
fraud related spam-sites. Such sites typically send 10 to 100 times more traffic to
advertising exchanges. It is not uncommon for such a site to send a hundred million
impressions (or more) to be sold in ad exchanges in a single day
2. Traffic: It is important to understand that there are two kinds of traffic; one with potential
for advertising effectiveness, and the other with no potential for advertising effectiveness.
3. Spambots. A typical social bot may post content from multiple sites thousands of times
per day. These social spambots are used to create the impression of a popular site, by
showing high levels of sharing associated with the content on the site.
The industry’s focus should be concentrated on the two areas where the ad fraud money is
being made; spam-sites and sourced traffic.
There are various ways in which advertisers can buy digital media, but programmatic is by far
the fastest growing means of doing this. There are many reasons for this, not least that many
advertisers have identified a number of performance improvements from buying
programmatically.
Given programmatic is widely anticipated to become the universal approach to buying all
media, a typical programmatic buy has been taken as the basis for the following analysis. This
shows where ad fraud enters the ecosystem and illustrates the impact it has on an advertiser’s
investment throughout the process.

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9MO’S ROADMAP TO TACKLE AD FRAUD
9MediaOnline’s biggest challenge has been to find increasingly new ways to tackle AD Fraud –
Botnets, Malware and infringed content. We are coordinating a proactive progressive effort to
holistically address the situation. We need to aggressively address bot fraud, human fraud and
the black market of sourced traffic at an industry level.
There are a few steps that we ensure from our end to provide the best of best relevant traffic:
1. We initialize a campaign only after clear KPI’s and objectives are established’
2. We insist that our publishers and other vendors only use third-party technology that has
been independently audited to industry guidelines and best practices that address issues
such as transparent measurement, brand safety and supply chain efficiency.
3. We pick-up a campaign performance report daily to ensure that the ads are run on
what sites and if the content is brand friendly (not spam).
4. We create client-specific white-lists that are content verified.
5. Viewability - 9MO is working with publishers who are working towards making advertising
wither more viewable or only viewable.
6. Tackling AD Blocking issue: Some of our publishers use code to identify AdBlock use and
restrict access to content. We are working with others to ensure the same methodology is
adopted. However, there are anti-block blockers that overide our system. Hence 9MO is
looking to reach out to more relevant users to tackle this growing issue.
7. Being a TAG member (Trustworthy Accountability Group), we comply with the Media
Rating Council’s Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Guidelines.
8. 9MO is constantly working backend to analyze preferred domain list for industries and
data center IP list filtering.
9. As the next big initiative 9MO is working with technology companies to build a one-of-a-
kind content verification technology that tackles the fraudulent content issues largely.
About 9MediaOnline: 9MediaOnline, digital media company specializing in marketing,
advertising and publishing with substantial focus on deploying performance based marketing
campaigns. We deliver over 500 million viewable ad impressions every day that focuses on
measurable effectiveness of the campaign delivery.
For any queries, please feel free to contact us at info@9mediaonline.com.