Publisher Verification: A Simple Proposal for Killing Online Ad Fraud -- Say Media

amp8220You can tell itamp8217s bot traffic just by looking at the analyticsamp8221 Confession of a fake Web traffic buyerIt39s no joke that fake traffic bogus publishers and invisible Web visitors are real threats to legitimate digital media companies publishers and the brands that advertise online A recent headline in AdAge put a fine point on it The Amount of Questionable Online Traffic Will Blow Your Mind And it39s true there are a lot of unscrupulous ad exchanges chasing bogus clicks and trading in junk pageviews So much activity in fact that it has its own acronym now NHT NonHuman Traffic But there39s also a simple fix amp8211 and it doesn39t involve sophisticated fraud algorithms or new technology to thwart bots And all of us can make it happenLet me explainFraudsters direct their botfarms where they are going to make money so this is about following the money It turns out there are only a few ways for fraud to make the bad actor moneyamp183 Create a website and generate page views for the site with nonhuman traffic cash checks from ad networks and exchanges that are running ads on your siteamp183 Use your website and army of bots to generate traffic for legitimate websites that are buying traffic from relatedcontent or linkexchange companiesTo solve this problem all we need is a way to limit these two cases in the ecosystem and weamp8217ll be able to limit fraud and the negative impact that fraud has on our industryIamp8217m calling for a respected industry group like the IAB to create a domain registry The rules of this registry should be very simple In fact the whole fraud issue can be dealt with two steps1 Validate that the domain is owned by a legitimate media enterprise If you canamp8217t find an address get someone on the phone and get a tax ID number from the entity that youamp8217re running ads on something is wrong End of story2 Verify that the domain has less than 1015 percent of its traffic coming from paid sources The exact percentage should be determined by the appropriate industry group but in general if a site has more that 1015 percent of its traffic coming from paid sources then you arenamp8217t buying what you think youamp8217re buying as an advertiser Some paid traffic for a site is always important to build awareness but if a huge chunk of the traffic is being bought then either some kind of arbitrage is happening or the traffic is cheap enough that fraud is almost certainly involved If you think this isnamp8217t common practice check out Digidayamp8217s recent QampampA with a Fake Web Traffic BuyerAnd that39s it It39s that simple If advertisers want to support the elimination of fraud they should only buy ads on domains that are listed on this registryAdvertisers should care about underwriting great media enterprises trying to attract and engage real consumers Instead everyone looks the other way and counts pageviews Advertisers don39t require their publishing partners to validate every site in their network The result is mountains of junk pageviews and ghost websites trafficked only by botsIf you care about digital media as I do I39d like to propose a call to the entire publishing and advertising marketplace Letamp8217s get serious about this issue and create a domain registry that protects legitimate digital media publishers If we all bought in the incentives for programmatic click fraud for advertising would be gone and the problem would disappear overnightMatt Sanchez is the CEO of Say Media Follow him on Twitter msanchez Say Media is a digital publishing company that creates amazing media brands Through its technology platform and media services Say enables its portfolio of independent content creators to build passionate communities around key consumer interest areas such as Style Living Food and Tech For more information visit wwwsaymediacomRead all Say Media39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Say DailyCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates at MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Publisher Verification: A Simple Proposal for Killing Online Ad Fraud -- Say Media

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