Traffic Quality Webinar

Addressing Non-Human Traffic &
Providing Transparency
Proprietary & Confidential. Copyright © 2014.
Susan Bidel
Senior Analyst, Forrester
Ari Levenfeld
Senior Director of Privacy & Inventory Quality,
Rocket Fuel

Making Leaders Successful
Every Day

Digital Advertising’s Dirty Little
Secret: Fraud
Susan Bidel, Senior Analyst
December 2014

Agenda
› Syphoning Revenue from the Whole Ecosystem
› Lack of Transparency Facilitates Fraudulent
Activity
› Publishers and Advertisers Alike Need to Clean
House
›
Recommendations
© 2013 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Agenda
› Syphoning Revenue from the Whole Ecosystem
› Lack of Transparency Facilitates Fraudulent
Activity
› Publishers and Advertisers Alike Need to Clean
House
› Recommendations

Fraud defined
Fraud in digital advertising is
characterized by reaping financial
rewards through the deployment of
technologies that mislead advertisers on
where their ads are running and/or who
or what is clicking and interacting with
those ads.

Lost in Display
“In display, it’s driven
40%
$11.6 Billion in 2014
according to Solve Media 22% increase
over 2013
by botnets, ad stacking, and
impression laundering.”
Kaylie Smith
Rubicon Project

Botnets

Ad Stacking

Impression Laundering

Tool Bars

Video Appeals to Fraudsters
The quality of supply isn’t great,
since it’s more expensive to create.
So CPMs are higher against this
limited supply, making video a
better target.
Steve Sullivan
Vice President
Ad
Technologies
IAB
“
“

Mobile Fraud is Difficult to Detect
[We] don’t expect to see the same
volume of fraudulent traffic as
with desktop.
“
“
Steve Sullivan

Agenda
› Syphoning Revenue from the Whole
Ecosystem
› Lack of Transparency Facilitates
Fraudulent Activity
› Publishers and Advertisers Alike Need to
Clean House
› Recommendations

Fraud Not Yet a Major Marketer Concern
› Transparency concern
› Growing year over year

But It’s On the rise
› Fraud emerging as a major concern
among marketers

Marketer Responsibility
› Stop seeking bottom dollar deals
› Require complete transparency
about where ads are running
› Consider other measures of success
beyond the click

Embrace Transparency
› Marketers
• Know who you’re dealing with and where
your ads are running
• Require completely transparent list of all
sites
Buyers should buy only against a
white list with domain transparency. “
“
Larry Allen
Sr. VP Development
Xaxis

Exchanges can filter toolbars, but
they also have an incentive to
grow audience scale.
“
Andrew Casale
VP Strategy
Casale Media

› Publishers
• Don’t stack ads – it’s unethical
• Stop compromising traffic quality to fulfill
campaign requirements
Publishers become over-reliant
on paid traffic sources, maybe buying
50%-60% of their traffic from second-and
third-tier networks….
“
Qasim Saifee
Sr. VP Monetization Platform
OpenX

Employ Programmatic to Fight Ad Fraud
Programmatic offers unparalleled optics at the
impression level to fight fraud
› Insist exchanges impose quality control on
buyers and sellers
› Publishers: buy your own site
› Marketers: be wary of CPC and CPA deal that
look too good

Thank you
Susan Bidel
+1 212.857.0751
sbidel@forrester.com

Ari Levenfeld, Senior Director of Privacy and Inventory
Quality
● Hired by Rocket Fuel 4 years ago
specifically to address inventory quality
● 15 years of quality and policy experience
● IAB QAG certified
● Member of IAB TOGI
● IAB Anti Fraud Working Group
● MRC Invalid Traffic Working Group

HOW WE FIGHT FRAUD

Removing Bad Traffic at the Pre-Bid Level
Currently up to 40% of traffic is discarded… 500 BILLION impressions / month
And at Rocket Fuel we’ve seen 8% rise in impressions we routinely reject

Removing Bad Traffic at the Pre-Bid Level
AI

How Do We Spot Real Humans?

Artificial Intelligence
We have an inventory quality model - the same artificial intelligence and models we use to optimize our
clients’ campaigns is also dedicated to identifying and blocking suspicious activity.
Example: Millions of features, petabytes of data evaluate bid requests in less than 100 milliseconds.

Stuff That Doesn’t Add Up
We compare data in bid requests and across impressions. When we see things that don’t make
sense, we block. Example: A user who provides a different UserAgent in the bid request and in the
impression.

Patent Pending Technology
100% certainty of what’s happening at other end of computer screen is hard. But we’ve come up with a
unique CAPTCHA-like test for “humanness”, and we’re patenting it.
Example: Bots Don’t Buy Things

Pool Resources with Industry
We work publicly and behind the scenes with other ad tech companies to share data to eradicate fraud.
Example: IAB Traffic of Good Intent Task Force.

DO I HAVE BAD TRAFFIC?

Most People Do… It’s Unavoidable

Aiding Industry to Combat Fraud
Rocket Fuel Traffic Scanner is
a traffic monitoring tool giving
marketers full transparency
into quality of traffic across
online ads and media
properties with any
programmatic partner.
Available in 3 countries
covering digital campaigns
around the world

What Should I aim For?
Rocket Fuel introduced the Quality Challenge for Digital Marketers to stay above 95%
Marketers should require that their partners know and state the quality of their impressions
validated and publicly reported on by an accredited 3rd party or through Traffic Scanner.
Rocket Fuel’s
Quality Score
Traffic Scanner - 96.55%
Forensiq - 96.28%

What Else Can I Do About This?
● Work with companies that give deeper information about bad traffic
● Stay updated on the latest that comes from industry bodies like the IAB Anti-
Fraud Working Group
● Partner with companies like Rocket Fuel, who routinely remove bad traffic at
the pre-bid level, have a high traffic quality score, and are constantly improving

QUESTIONS?

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