Articles and Research

It's common and even expected within the online advertising marketplace to employ an IP blocklist to traffic—a list of IPs that are considered high risk for generating fake impressions and clicks. Companies are given the lists and told to steer clear to prevent ad fraud. But what is the reasoning behind the list? And shouldn't a user have a bit of insight about why an IP made the list, especially if it means blocking potentially valuable impressions?

Fraudlogix is adding a popular feature to its suite of products: viewability measurement.

Transparency seems to be the mantra for ad fraud verification vendors and the value they’re bringing to the industry. However, marketers rarely ask for – and vendors rarely offer – information about why certain traffic is flagged as suspicious.

For many on the supply side, the onboarding of new publisher partners includes an initial vetting of their traffic, looking for impression fraud and invalid traffic. This quality check is important in the prevention of ad fraud making its way into a platform or exchange. But once publishers are given the green light to sell inventory, are they ever inspected again? They should be.

Within the programmatic ad industry, supply side revenue (that of networks, SSPs and exchanges) is directly connected to the amount of traffic that passes through their space, as they get a percentage of the CPM on every transaction. This correlation between traffic volume and revenue is hard to ignore and it has also helped to drive an unfounded fear among some sell siders that any reduction of volume will negatively affect the bottom line. Not true.

In the battle against ad fraud, some of the basic recommendations to protect ad dollars within the programmatic space is to employ a block list so that ads don’t get served from IP addresses associated with fraudulent activity. This recommendation has been stressed to both the demand and supply sides of the programmatic ecosystem. Here are five questions to ask about a block list before applying it to your space:

Ad fraud continues to make headlines and move to the forefront of the industry's mind—or at least it should—as spending increases within the programmatic landscape. While it’s important to acknowledge the ad fraud problem and look for ways to combat it, there are a few reoccurring misconceptions about it. Here are five of them:  

A brand is more than just a logo and a slogan, it’s a reputation and a carefully crafted culture. As programmatic spending increases, so too has the concern over where ads get placed. Marketers don’t want their creative appearing on contradictory or embarrassing websites that could potentially tarnish the brands they’ve worked so hard to build. Enter brand safety monitoring.