Aug 31, 2017 | ad fraud, adtech, verification
TL;DR Google is the biggest company in the world and makes 90% of its money from online ads. Google’s ad revenues are based on commissions it receives from ad buys on its system. When an advertiser buys an ad impression from some site through Google, the publisher...
Jul 25, 2017 | ad fraud, blockchain, token
“An ad network, a surveillance capitalism lobby, an ad fraud consultant, and an ICO factory walks into a bar…” TL;DR adToken is the hook in a pitch that we call “Adnetwork 2.0”. It’s the first of a kind, but not in an exciting or...
Jul 20, 2017 | ad fraud, sourced traffic
TL;DR We conducted a scan of 50,000 websites, where we picked the sites based on how much ad inventory the site is making available in ad exchanges. I feel confident to conclude that both the quality of ad inventory, and the sites that make the inventory available...
Apr 29, 2017 | ad fraud, facepalm, security, verification
TL;DR What we have in ad fraud research, is companies that are not equipped or incentivized to invest in to serious research, and media that does not know what to believe and what to disregard. Once a company grows to a certain size, it becomes almost impossible for...
Oct 31, 2016 | ad fraud, botnet, DDoS, security, sourced traffic
But wait, if DDoS attacks can trigger ads on the target site, and sites make money from ads (and mostly only ads), whose the target? Can DDoS attacks trigger ads? TL;DR Yes. All application / layer-7 DDoS attacks trigger ads on the target site by default....
Jan 25, 2016 | ad fraud, cybercrime, security, verification
Ad fraud is the biggest cybercrime, yet it gets almost no attention from security researchers. It is clear why security researchers do not want to be part of countering ad fraud activity, but it is not so clear what the advertising technology industry is going to do...
