procurement to help fight ad fraud

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Procurement Should STEP IN to Help Fight Ad Fraud January 2018 Augustine Fou, PhD. [email protected] 212. 203 .7239

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Procurement Should

STEP INto Help Fight Ad Fraud

January 2018

Augustine Fou, PhD.

[email protected]

212. 203 .7239

January 2018 / Page 1marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Five Things Procurement Can Do1. DON’T buy low cost (CPMs) media – real human audiences are

very scarce and good publishers have those visitors; extreme low cost CPMs can only come from fake sites and ad fraud; smaller quantity and higher quality (sites, ads) are better

2. Insist on reports, line item details – know where your ads ran (brand safety and compliance); if ad exchange won’t tell you, don’t buy

3. Use continuous fraud detection – bad guys will always have better tech; use fraud detection as a “smoke detector” and then dig deeper

4. Optimize media towards humans – increase spend on media sources that have high humans to get your ads in front of humans

5. Focus on business outcomes – any quantity metric, and even some quality metrics can be faked by bots; focus on media channels that produce real business outcomes

January 2018 / Page 2marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Review agency contractshttp://www.ana.net/content/show/id/industry-initiative-media-transparency-report

2016 Assoc. of National Advertisers Media Transparency Initiative: K2 Report

Results of the study were delivered by K2 in a comprehensive report. Among the key findings:

• Numerous non-transparent business practices, including cash rebates to media agencies, were found to be pervasive in the U.S. media ad buying ecosystem.

• There were systemic elements to some of the non-transparent behavior. Specifically, senior executives across the agency ecosystem were aware of, and mandated, some non-transparent business practices.

• There was evidence of non-transparent practices across a wide range of media, including digital, print, out-of-home, and television.

“marketers prohibited from getting placement reports (where the ads ran)”

“marketers could not review CPM prices paid by agency”

Is agency acting as “principal” or “agent”?

January 2018 / Page 3marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Insist on reports, w/ line-item detailsLine item details

Overall average 9.4% CTR

“fraud hides easily in averages”

“line item details reveal obvious fraud”

January 2018 / Page 4marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Insist on continuous fraud detection

102,231 sessions

0 sessions

goal event – no change

January 2018 / Page 5marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Corroborate with analytics teams

click on links

load webpages tune bounce rate

tune pages/visit

“bad guys’ bots are advanced enough to fake most metrics”

January 2018 / Page 6marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Actively scrub bots/fraud in-flightLaunch Week 3 onwardWeeks 1-2

Initial baseline measurement

Measurement after first optimization

After eliminating several “problematic” networks

January 2018 / Page 7marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Measure for humans, not just bots

Lower quality paid sources mean higher cost per human acquired – like 11X the cost.

Sources of different quality send widely different amounts of humans to landing pages.

January 2018 / Page 8marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Shift budget to real conversions

Organic sources have more humans (dark blue)

Conversion actions (calls) are well correlated to humans; bots don’t call

January 2018 / Page 9marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

What is Ad Fraud?

January 2018 / Page 10marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

What is digital ad fraud ?

Ad Fraud = ad impressions caused by bots, not seen by humans

Impressions(CPM) Fraud

(includes mobile display, video ads)

Search Clicks (CPC) Fraud

(includes mobile search ads)

January 2018 / Page 11marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

How bad guys commit ad fraud1. set up

FAKE SITES2. buy

FAKE TRAFFIC3. sell

FAKE ADS

January 2018 / Page 12marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Fake sites have no content, no humansIdentical sites

made by templateAlphanumeric

domains

So they can sell ad “inventory” at low prices

Source: Sadbottrue.com

January 2018 / Page 13marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Beware mobile… MORE rampant fraud

Bad apps load impressions in background, not in use

Source: Forensiq

Fake mobile devices install apps and interact w/ them

Download and Install

Launch and Interact

“more money; less measurable”

“Let’s go fight some bad guys

together!”

January 2018 / Page 15marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

About the Author

January 2018

Augustine Fou, PhD.

[email protected]

212. 203 .7239

January 2018 / Page 16marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Dr. Augustine Fou – Independent Ad Fraud Researcher

2013

2014

Published slide decks and posts:http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/presentationshttps://www.linkedin.com/today/author/augustinefou

2016

2015

2017

January 2018 / Page 17marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

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Harvard Business Review

Excerpt:

Hunting the Bots

Fou, a prodigy who earned a Ph.D. from MIT at 23, belongs to the generation that witnessed the rise of digital marketers, having crafted his trade at American Express, one of the most successful American consumer brands, and at Omnicom, one of the largest global advertising agencies. Eventually stepping away from corporate life, Fou started his own practice, focusing on digital marketing fraud investigation.

Fou’s experiment proved that fake traffic is unproductive traffic. The fake visitors inflated the traffic statistics but contributed nothing to conversions, which stayed steady even after the traffic plummeted (bottom chart). Fake traffic is generated by “bad-guy bots.” A bot is computer code that runs automated tasks.