Combating Fraud: A View from the Front Lines

Part 1: The Impact of Fraud

Ad fraud is expected to cost the advertising industry more than $7 billion this year alone and the issue stands to undermine the growth of programmatic if it continues unchecked. In order to eliminate ad fraud, exchanges, demand-side platforms, publishers, brands and agencies need to work together to create a high-quality advertising ecosystem from end to end.

Companies across the industry, OpenX included, have been tackling fraud head on for the last couple of years, but industry bad actors evolve quickly due to the high rewards at stake. When industry leaders from all sides unite, we are better positioned to minimize the negative impact of fraud.

In the first part of this three part series on quality, our VP of marketplace quality John Murphy and director of traffic quality operations, Christopher Hallenback discuss the implications of ad fraud with Michael Tiffany, CEO and Founder at WhiteOps and David Hahn, EVP of Product and Strategy at Integral Ad Science.

Key Takeaways:

• Without visibility on high quality and low quality inventory, buyers will bid on a blended average, undercompensating good inventory and over compensating bad inventory.
• As an industry we need to prevent adverse selection and keep an open marketplace.
• Players in the space who already are hitting the highest levels of quality, stand to win in the end.

In the next two parts of the series, we’ll discuss the root of ad fraud, where it’s most prevalent, and how players in the industry are taking steps to make viewability a problem of the past.