Fraud in digital advertising

The Bot Baseline: Fraud in Digital Advertising White Ops, Inc. Association of National Advertisers DECEMBER 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS 05 About the Study 10 The Impact of Bots on Digital Media 18 Challenging Existing Assumptions: Bots Can End Up on Premium Sites 22 The Origin of Bots in the Media Supply Chain 28 How the Bots Blend In: Getting Targeted, Faking Metrics 33 How Bot Suppliers Get Away With It: Evasion 37 Sites That Only a Bot Could Love 41 When Publishers Are Victims Too: Ad Injection 44 Eliminating Bot Fraud: A Call to Action Appendix A: Glossary of Terms Appendix B: Constraints and Limitations Appendix C: External Study Contributors Appendix D: Illustrative Terms and Conditions 02 Special Thanks to the Following ANA Member Company Participants 03 ABOUT WHITE OPS A pioneer in the detection of bots and malware on the web, White Ops develops new bot detection technologies to differentiate between bot and human interaction. Bot detection makes bot/human decisions in online advertising, publishing, enterprise business networks, e-commerce transactions, and financial systems. White Ops protects clients from bot fraud by cutting off sources of bad traffic to make bot and malware fraud unprofitable and unsustainable. ABOUT THE ANA The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) provides leadership that advances marketing excellence and shapes the future of the industry.