Digital ad fraud can involve black hat techniques which deliberately steal ad dollars from brands; there are other gray hat techniques which artificially inflate traffic and ad impression numbers for profit.

1. Digital Advertising
Malpractices
Dr. Augustine Fou
http://linkd.in/augustinefou
February 2014
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Augustine Fou

2. Black Hat
Techniques
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3. Extreme Ad Load
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4. Ads in Hidden iFrames
Ads are hidden in up to
72 layers
Entire web pages are
loaded into ad iframes to
boost impressions
Multiple redirects and
auto page refreshes
Source: Spider.io May 2, 2013
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Augustine Fou

5. False “Viewability”
Ads are above the
fold of the page
But their pixel
opacity can be set
to zero (invisible)
Entire web pages
stuffed into ad
iframe; ads counted
as viewable
Source: Spider.io May 2, 2013
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Augustine Fou

6. Bots Generate Impressions
Source: Wired
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7. Sell Fake Impressions
“Modernbaby.com and Interiorcomplex.com
Each of these sites peddles enormous traffic on the
exchanges. For example, on a recent day Modern Baby was
offering 19 million impressions via one exchange (quite the
baby boom) and Interior Complex 30 million [ad
impressions PER DAY] (the roaring housing market must be
back).” Source: Adweek – Suspicious Web Domains Cost Online Ad Business $400m per Year
Peak unique users
141k per month
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Peak unique users
115k per moth
Augustine Fou

8. Traffic Firehose On/Off
Source: Alexa
Legit human traffic does not change rapidly; but bot traffic
(firehose) can be rapidly turned off and directed to other sites.
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Augustine Fou

9. Traffic Charts
Normal traffic vs Fake traffic
FAKE traffic is the same
across several sites
(corresponds to what was
purchased)
Normal traffic differs from
site to site
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Augustine Fou

10. Cookie Stuffing – Affiliate
Revenue Share Fraud
Since 2004, I've been tracking and
reporting all manner of rogue
affiliates -- using spyware and
adware to cover competitors'
sites; using trickier spyware and
adware to claim commission on
merchants' organic
traffic; typosquatting; stuffing
cookies through invisible IFRAME's
and IMG's, banner ads, and
even hacked forum sites; and the list
goes on.
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Source: Ben Edelman
Augustine Fou

11. Gray Hat
Techniques
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Augustine Fou

12. Autoplay Video Ads
Break.com
Multiple video ads
auto-played
simultaneously on
the same page.
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Augustine Fou

13. Autoplay Video Takeover
Break.com
Autoplayed T-mobile
video ad in full page
takeover.
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Augustine Fou

14. Proven Click Bait
Break.com
Pictures which are designed to get the
user to click, and then click through
nearly the entire 40 image gallery to
find said image.
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Augustine Fou

15. Galleries of Images
Break.com
Every click to
the next image
loads a new ad
impression.
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Augustine Fou

16. Auto Refresh Ads
Inflating ad impressions served
Same page, but ads are auto-refreshed every 2 mins; 7 more ad impressions
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Augustine Fou

17. Duplicate Loading comScore
Searched for the following on Google
"<script>
var _comscore = _comscore ||
[];
_comscore.push({ c1: "2", c2:
"4000003", c3: "4000003", c4:
window.location.href, c5: "", c6: "", c15: "" });"
Which is the comScore beacon from
the page source of Break.com
Google shows about 200 results with
the same beacon code “4000003”
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Augustine Fou

18. Ghost Sites to Inflate Traffic
Quantcast reports 105 sites
that use the Complex
Quantcast tag (part of their
network)
Our data shows 382 sites
using the same quantcast tag
(which inflates actual traffic
counts).
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Augustine Fou

19. Ghost Sites to Inflate Traffic
Quantcast reports 26 sites
that use the Complex
Quantcast tag (part of their
network)
Our data shows 278 sites
using the same quantcast tag
(which inflates actual traffic
counts).
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Augustine Fou

20. Related Articles
Bad Guys Happily Rob Display Advertisers
By: Augustine Fou, July 23, 2012
Everything Fake (Display Ad Fraud, Search Click Fraud)
By: Augustine Fou, April 2013
Blacklisting vs Whitelisting
By: Augustine Fou, October 2013
Fake Profiles on Facebook
By: Augustine Fou, July 2013
How Display Ad Fraud Works
By: Augustine Fou, May 2013
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Augustine Fou

21. Dr. Augustine Fou – Digital Consigliere
“I advise clients on optimizing
advertising across all channels. One
aspect of this is detecting waste and
fraud; and then taking steps to mitigate
it.”
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
ClickZ Articles: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-clickz
Slideshares: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-slideshares
LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/augustinefou
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@acfou
Augustine Fou