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DATE | 2015-11-03 |
FROM | Ruben Safir
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SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout-NYLXS] UML software development and the team effort..
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/online-advertising-fraudsters-turn-to-ad-injection-scams-1446542101
Keep making that software with UML and input from an bunch of no-experts and see what you get...
Online Advertising Fraudsters Turn to ‘Ad-Injection’ Scams The trend is worrisome for online publishers, which could be missing out on revenue Photo: Getty Images By Jack Marshall Nov. 3, 2015 4:15 a.m. ET 0 COMMENTS
The online ad industry has yet another challenge to contend with, and this time it’s publishers bearing the brunt instead of marketers.
The industry is already fighting an ongoing battle against “bots,” computer programs that disguise themselves as real users to defraud advertisers. But now fraud detection companies say there’s a growing threat from “ad injection,” whereby Web users’ browsers are commandeered and ads are stuffed into sites without publishers’ permission.
For years fraudsters have been using computer-generated bots to mimic the actions of humans, creating phantom Web traffic. Similar malware that’s used to infect consumers with bots can also be used to inject unwanted ads in their browsers, slotting in additional ads in pages where no ads would usually be, or layering them on top of legitimate ads.
The practice is on the rise. In a recent study of a major U.S. publisher’s site, ad fraud detection firm WhiteOps found that injected ads comprised greater than 3% of all impressions, while sophisticated bot traffic was less than 2%.
“From what we’re seeing, growth in ad-injection infection rates is higher than bots,” said Michael Tiffany, chief executive of WhiteOps. “There’s no question that ad bots inflating views is still profitable crime. I don’t want to say that’s unprofitable and there’s a switch, but we do think some people are shifting their payloads so that they’re doing less ad bot monetization and more ad injection monetization.”
According to ad fraud detection firm Forensiq, ad-injection was responsible for around 12.5% of inventory it saw offered for sale through real-time automated ad auctions during September. In October that portion had grown to around 16.5 %, the company said.
The trend is particularly worrisome for online publishers, which could be missing out on advertising revenue as a result of ad injection. In the case of bot fraud, advertisers are harmed because they’re tricked into paying for illegitimate ads on sites whose audiences are artificially inflated. With ad injection, publishers could lose out when ads are placed in front of their users without payment reaching them, or when their ads are covered or displaced by injected ones.
Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next, a digital publishing trade association, said marketers are still the primary victim of this type of activity, “but ad injection is definitely on the rise and is one of the main ways premium publishers are more directly being harmed.”
Advertisers have less reason to be concerned about the practice, because injected ads are at least being placed in front of real people. In fact, they might be cheaper than buying the ads from the publishers themselves.
“I think most advertisers would agree that injected inventory is wrong. But it is clearer in the case of ad injection that the party that’s really getting harmed is publishers,” said Mr. Tiffany. “I don’t think most publishers have caught on to the way they’re being victimized.”
Marketer trade body, the Association of National Advertisers, declined to comment.
The ad industry’s crackdown on bots and non-human traffic may be steering fraudsters towards ad injection, industry executives say.
Mr. Tiffany said one appeal of ad injection for malware operators is that it’s harder to detect and to combat, for example.
“The long-term value might be higher because in the ad bot game you need to continually infect new computers as they are discovered,” he said. “Ad injection might not be more profitable, but it could be less work because you don’t have to continuously infect machines.”
Fraud-detection companies potentially stand to benefit indirectly from an increased focus in the industry on ad-injection, given that they sell solutions to detect and combat it.
Write to Jack Marshall at Jack.Marshall-at-wsj.com _______________________________________________ hangout mailing list hangout-at-nylxs.com http://www.nylxs.com/ |
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