Re: [projectvrm] Shifting the costs of ad fraud

[Doc Searls < >]

Suggestion: publish this, plus additional dollops of your usual wisdom, as a 
Medium piece.

Doc

> On Jul 14, 2015, at 10:00 AM, Don Marti 
> <
 >
>  wrote:
> 
> Making the rounds...
> 
>  Banner “Fraud” Doesn’t Matter
>  Rick Webb
>  https://medium.com/@RickWebb/banner-fraud-doesn-t-matter-fc84413fe59c
> 
>  We use banners as little billboards now. We use them
>  strategically as incredibly cheap (so cheap) repeat
>  impressions for brand awareness. We know many people
>  don’t see them, we know most people don’t see them.
>  That’s okay. We use them accordingly, and the cost
>  has been adjusted down to make them a perfectly great
>  buy even though most people don’t see them.
> 
>  We use them to measure the efficacy of campaigns we
>  run _our_ way, using _our_ metrics. 
> 
> So Webb's method for dealing with fraud is:
> 
> * Rely on the presence of huge quantities of
>   fraudulent traffic to drive down CPMs everywhere.
>   Buy a mix of fraudulent and legit banner impressions
>   at massive scale.
> 
> * Assume that adtech data is bogus, and that you
>   have to measure banner impact with offline tools,
>   as you would for a billboard.
> 
> That solves Webb's problem.  Unfortunately, his
> strategy makes things worse for publishers and users.
> 
> * Ad fraud isn't just servers full of bots hitting
>   servers full of ads. Ad fraud is now the number one
>   malware payload. When Webb pays indiscriminately
>   for fraudulent and legit banners, he's funding
>   malware development, along with a bunch of other
>   bad behavior, from copyright infringement to comment
>   spam.
> 
> * When fraud is priced in, legit sites are in direct
>   price competition with fraud sites.  Costs of fraud
>   end up being borne by publishers in the form of
>   lower CPMs.
> 
> Important implication of this: if you can figure out
> the minimum quality level that makes banner inventory
> viable for Webb's "mass buy/offline measurement"
> strategy, you can focus anti-fraud projects on the
> _marginal banner_ -- whatever inventory is just barely
> possibly non-fraudulent enough for a real advertiser
> to consider buying it.
> 
> How do we spot the low-quality ad buys?  This is
> where brand-unsafe placements and ad-supported piracy
> could be useful.  Spot those, and you can get some
> idea of where the fraud-tolerant ad money is going,
> and where is best to move in order to cut it off.
> 
> -- 
> Don Marti 
> <
 >
>                    
> http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
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