Digital ad fraud is as rampant as ever. It requires brand advertisers who are spending the money to step up and more aggressively fight the fraud and mitigate it by using a variety of techniques.

1. Augustine Fou- 1 -
Digital Ad Fraud
Mitigation Techniques
Dr. Augustine Fou
http://linkd.in/augustinefou
acfou @mktsci .com
February 2014

2. Augustine Fou- 2 -
Blacklisting Sites
Value
Exclude sites from
serving your ads
Caveat
For every site excluded,
bad guys put up more
(because they don’t have
to play by the rules).

3. Augustine Fou- 3 -
Whitelisting Sites
Value
Explicitly specify
which sites to
serve your ads
Caveat
May miss some of the
long tail sites which real
human visitors actually
go to.

4. Augustine Fou- 4 -
Enforcing Viewability
Source: Spider.io May 2, 2013
Value
Only pay for ads which
are viewable (i.e. above
the-fold)
Caveat
Bad guys can defeat
“viewability” by stuffing ads
in hidden layers, all “above-
the-fold”

5. Augustine Fou- 5 -
Using CAPTCHAs
“Startup called Vicarious
automatically solves
CAPTCHAs.” Oct 2013
http://bit.ly/1bFo9lZ
Value
Captchas deter bots from
filling in forms and stealing
content and cookies.
Caveat
Some bots can now solve some
captchas, most captchas don’t
protect content pages.
Source: Solve Media Dec 31 2013

6. Augustine Fou- 6 -
Bot Detection
Source: Spider.io March 2013
Value
Good guys use algorithms
to detect unusual
behaviors indicative of
bots (rather than humans)
Caveat
It’s an arms race between
good and bad; bots are more
sophisticated and can fake
mouse movements and keep
cookies.

7. Augustine Fou- 7 -
Blacklisting Cookies
Value
If a user/cookie has been
seen exhibiting anomalous
behaviors before, it can be
blacklisted so no ads are
served to it.
Caveat
Bad guys can spin up new
bots at will and turn off ones
that no longer make money
for them; they can delete or
keep cookies at will.
fraud site
good site
bot
human
ad

8. Augustine Fou- 8 -
Whitelisting Humans
Value
If an ad is served and seen
by a human then it has the
opportunity to drive
business outcomes for the
advertiser.
Caveat
It is relatively hard to find
those needles (humans) in
the extremely large haystack
of all web users, and re-
verify they are real humans

9. Augustine Fou- 9 -
Dr. Augustine Fou – Digital Forensics
“I advise clients on optimizing
advertising across all channels. Using
advanced technical forensic techniques
and custom tchnology tools, we detect
and mitigate ad fraud and reduce waste
in order to increase ROI.”
FORMER CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, HCG (OMNICOM)
MCKINSEY CONSULTANT
CLIENT SIDE / AGENCY SIDE EXPERIENCE
PROFESSOR AND COLUMNIST
ENTREPRENEUR / SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
PHD MATERIALS SCIENCE (MIT '95) AT AGE 23
@acfou
ClickZ Articles: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-clickz
Slideshares: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-slideshares
LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/augustinefou

10. Augustine Fou- 10 -
Additional Resources
Augustine Fou- 10 -
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/percent-of-internet-traffic-that-is-
bots-augustine-fou-2014
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/bot-vs-human-in-digital-advertising-
web-traffic-by-augustine-fou
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/the-good-guys-of-ad-fraud-2014-
augustine-fou
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/ad-fraud-estimates-by-augustine-
fou-technical-forensics-32293935
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140623200557-84444-five-
separate-vendors-confirm-bot-traffic-in-60-range