This week's review of ad fraud and quality in the digital advertising space.
TAG this week announced that "publishers are now required to implement the initiative, ads.txt, in order to receive a 'certified against fraud' seal," reported Advertising Age. The article added: "According to Pixalate, more than 95,000 sites have implemented ads.txt."
"Even the most fervent believers in programmatic advertising believe it needs to undergo a cleanup, as marketers lose faith in ad tech due to issues like hidden fees, ad fraud and murky auction models," wrote Digiday, reporting on the mood at the recent AdExchanger Industry Preview event. The article added that the event featured the "candid admission that automated ad buying is undeniably the future but has many problems that cannot be put off."
The Motley Fool reported on some potential reasons behind the jump in price Roku's stock experienced to begin the week (up 6% on Monday). "Roku is aggressively shifting its focus toward its platform business, which is predominantly driven by advertising revenue," wrote The Motley Fool. "Improving measurement for customers (advertisers) is a core piece of building that business, and Roku grabs nearly 70% of all OTT programmatic advertising, according to Pixalate," the article added.
Ars Technica has reported that "[r]esearchers have uncovered four malicious extensions with more than 500,000 combined downloads from the Google Chrome Web Store," noting that Google has since removed the extensions. The extensions were used as part of a click fraud scheme, per the article.
The Drum examines into the link between ad fraud and fake news, citing observations from Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, an assistant professor in the history of behavioral science at the Ohio State University, and a recent whitepaper from AppNexus, which highlighted the link.
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