Procurement Should
STEP INto Help Fight Ad Fraud
January 2018
Augustine Fou, PhD.
212. 203 .7239
January 2018 / Page 1marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Five Things Procurement Can Do1. DON’T buy low cost (CPMs) media – real human audiences are
very scarce and good publishers have those visitors; extreme low cost CPMs can only come from fake sites and ad fraud; smaller quantity and higher quality (sites, ads) are better
2. Insist on reports, line item details – know where your ads ran (brand safety and compliance); if ad exchange won’t tell you, don’t buy
3. Use continuous fraud detection – bad guys will always have better tech; use fraud detection as a “smoke detector” and then dig deeper
4. Optimize media towards humans – increase spend on media sources that have high humans to get your ads in front of humans
5. Focus on business outcomes – any quantity metric, and even some quality metrics can be faked by bots; focus on media channels that produce real business outcomes
January 2018 / Page 2marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Review agency contractshttp://www.ana.net/content/show/id/industry-initiative-media-transparency-report
2016 Assoc. of National Advertisers Media Transparency Initiative: K2 Report
Results of the study were delivered by K2 in a comprehensive report. Among the key findings:
• Numerous non-transparent business practices, including cash rebates to media agencies, were found to be pervasive in the U.S. media ad buying ecosystem.
• There were systemic elements to some of the non-transparent behavior. Specifically, senior executives across the agency ecosystem were aware of, and mandated, some non-transparent business practices.
• There was evidence of non-transparent practices across a wide range of media, including digital, print, out-of-home, and television.
“marketers prohibited from getting placement reports (where the ads ran)”
“marketers could not review CPM prices paid by agency”
Is agency acting as “principal” or “agent”?
January 2018 / Page 3marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Insist on reports, w/ line-item detailsLine item details
Overall average 9.4% CTR
“fraud hides easily in averages”
“line item details reveal obvious fraud”
January 2018 / Page 4marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Insist on continuous fraud detection
102,231 sessions
0 sessions
goal event – no change
January 2018 / Page 5marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Corroborate with analytics teams
click on links
load webpages tune bounce rate
tune pages/visit
“bad guys’ bots are advanced enough to fake most metrics”
January 2018 / Page 6marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Actively scrub bots/fraud in-flightLaunch Week 3 onwardWeeks 1-2
Initial baseline measurement
Measurement after first optimization
After eliminating several “problematic” networks
January 2018 / Page 7marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Measure for humans, not just bots
Lower quality paid sources mean higher cost per human acquired – like 11X the cost.
Sources of different quality send widely different amounts of humans to landing pages.
January 2018 / Page 8marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Shift budget to real conversions
Organic sources have more humans (dark blue)
Conversion actions (calls) are well correlated to humans; bots don’t call
January 2018 / Page 9marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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What is Ad Fraud?
January 2018 / Page 10marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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What is digital ad fraud ?
Ad Fraud = ad impressions caused by bots, not seen by humans
Impressions(CPM) Fraud
(includes mobile display, video ads)
Search Clicks (CPC) Fraud
(includes mobile search ads)
January 2018 / Page 11marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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How bad guys commit ad fraud1. set up
FAKE SITES2. buy
FAKE TRAFFIC3. sell
FAKE ADS
January 2018 / Page 12marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Fake sites have no content, no humansIdentical sites
made by templateAlphanumeric
domains
So they can sell ad “inventory” at low prices
Source: Sadbottrue.com
January 2018 / Page 13marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Beware mobile… MORE rampant fraud
Bad apps load impressions in background, not in use
Source: Forensiq
Fake mobile devices install apps and interact w/ them
Download and Install
Launch and Interact
“more money; less measurable”
January 2018 / Page 15marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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About the Author
January 2018
Augustine Fou, PhD.
212. 203 .7239
January 2018 / Page 16marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Dr. Augustine Fou – Independent Ad Fraud Researcher
2013
2014
Published slide decks and posts:http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/presentationshttps://www.linkedin.com/today/author/augustinefou
2016
2015
2017
January 2018 / Page 17marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
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Harvard Business Review
Excerpt:
Hunting the Bots
Fou, a prodigy who earned a Ph.D. from MIT at 23, belongs to the generation that witnessed the rise of digital marketers, having crafted his trade at American Express, one of the most successful American consumer brands, and at Omnicom, one of the largest global advertising agencies. Eventually stepping away from corporate life, Fou started his own practice, focusing on digital marketing fraud investigation.
Fou’s experiment proved that fake traffic is unproductive traffic. The fake visitors inflated the traffic statistics but contributed nothing to conversions, which stayed steady even after the traffic plummeted (bottom chart). Fake traffic is generated by “bad-guy bots.” A bot is computer code that runs automated tasks.