Ad networks, DSPs, ad agencies and advertisers are pouring lots of money to make an impact on real people. Major finance flows attract fraudsters that want to get their piece of pie. That’s where the need for third-party traffic verification arises.

“Ad fraud” means that media buyers don’t get the value they pay for in return.

It includes the following categories:

• non-human traffic or simply – clicks on ads by bots,
• no viewability or delivering ads to the placements, where they can’t be seen,
• traffic mislabeling.

The key ways of fighting ad fraud in short are as follows:

1. Pre-bid contextual data segments use.

You can buy the data and protect yourself beforehand, instead of reacting to fraudulent activity on the way.

Data providers are selling data on traffic, divided by the segments of potential safety.

2. Keeping a universal blacklist up to date.

Or a whitelist. Either make a list of websites you trust, or block the invalid traffic by shutting down low-quality sites in a blacklist.

The problem with these lists is that you have to react on changes and remain active in managing them.

3. Private marketplace deals.

PMP is where a number of premium publishers offer their inventory to a selected group of advertisers. Fraudulent publishers usually don’t participate in them, since they don’t have the teams to back such deals.

The problem with PMP is that you won’t be able to scale, you limit your reach.

4. Your campaign data analysis.

Once you get the data on ad fraud percentage and optimize your campaign. You can shut down low-quality publishers and reallocate your budget.

Where can you get the data for campaign audits from? Traffic verification vendors.

5. Cooperation with an ad fraud verification vendor.

Verification vendors offer the tools to measure and evaluate the traffic. Admixer, for example, works with Forensiq. We agree with the fraud detector in one thing for sure: Fraudsters develop their tools to be more sophisticated, and machine learning for better fraud prevention.

Ad fraud is a great pain not only for advertisers, but also for publishers. The smaller ones are deprived of the dollars they could get, and the larger ones can get their reputation injured.

As fraudsters develop their tools, it’s getting hard to react to all the changes. Luckily, the vendors are here to help detect and prevent some shady traffic.