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This is overlooking the problem of detecting that people are doing something malicious. There is a fairly large variety of unwanted behavior, both by the advert

This is overlooking the problem of detecting that people are doing something malicious. There is a fairly large variety of unwanted behavior, both by the advertisements, and by the sites or apps hosting the ads.

manigandham 8y ago
That's covered under "no consequences". You don't need fancy tech, most of the malicious behavior comes from a limited set of bad actors and vectors. It's just not stopped because nobody cares to.
- nitwit005 8y ago
  Sorry, but you genuinely do need fancy tech to detect it. There are multiple businesses that do nothing but that, plus teams at most of the big ad tech companies. You may notice this article cites Protected Media and DoubleVerify. You can't manually audit that kind of traffic volume. Several of the ad tech companies have pressed law enforcement to prosecute some of these people, but mostly unsuccessfully. They're often in places that are difficult to extradite from like Russia, hiding behind some botnet: https://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/why-the-doj-finally-cracked-down-on-ad-fraud/ https://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/why-the-doj-final...
  - manigandham 8y ago
    My point is that detection doesn't solve anything, it's treating the symptom. The solution is to stop working with bad actors, but nobody does that because it's easy money and there's plausible deniability by creating new companies, accounts, sites, etc. Your 2nd statement is what I'm saying: no consequences refers to the lack of oversight, regulation and enforcement in the industry. That's why there's barely any prosecution. For example, Buzzfeed did an expose last year about Newsweek/IBTimes committing ad fraud, except it was already well known by everyone in adtech. People like getting paid and they're not going to stop on their own. Btw, I personally know the founders of all those companies. If fraud was eliminated then they would go out of business. They're not interested in solving the problem even if they could.

manigandham 8y ago

That's covered under "no consequences". You don't need fancy tech, most of the malicious behavior comes from a limited set of bad actors and vectors. It's just not stopped because nobody cares to.

nitwit005 8y ago
Sorry, but you genuinely do need fancy tech to detect it. There are multiple businesses that do nothing but that, plus teams at most of the big ad tech companies. You may notice this article cites Protected Media and DoubleVerify. You can't manually audit that kind of traffic volume. Several of the ad tech companies have pressed law enforcement to prosecute some of these people, but mostly unsuccessfully. They're often in places that are difficult to extradite from like Russia, hiding behind some botnet: https://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/why-the-doj-finally-cracked-down-on-ad-fraud/ https://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/why-the-doj-final...
- manigandham 8y ago
  My point is that detection doesn't solve anything, it's treating the symptom. The solution is to stop working with bad actors, but nobody does that because it's easy money and there's plausible deniability by creating new companies, accounts, sites, etc. Your 2nd statement is what I'm saying: no consequences refers to the lack of oversight, regulation and enforcement in the industry. That's why there's barely any prosecution. For example, Buzzfeed did an expose last year about Newsweek/IBTimes committing ad fraud, except it was already well known by everyone in adtech. People like getting paid and they're not going to stop on their own. Btw, I personally know the founders of all those companies. If fraud was eliminated then they would go out of business. They're not interested in solving the problem even if they could.