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Adtech veteran here. That's not how the industry works. All ads on major DSPs already require approval before they can run. Advertiser accounts too, especially

Adtech veteran here. That's not how the industry works. All ads on major DSPs already require approval before they can run. Advertiser accounts too, especially at scale. While there are plenty of technical openings for fraud and malware, the vast majority is from known actors that can be resolved through business practices. A trillion-dollar megacorporation with hundreds of thousands of employees has more than enough resources to handle this. The reason it doesn't is because of the flow of money and incentives across the vast supply chain from advertisers and agencies to vendors and publishers.

shadowgovt 4y ago
Adtech veteran here (from the other side). The trillion dollar corporation has vast teams and assets invested in this project. No temporary monetary incentive is worth the risk of being seen as a likelier vendor of malware than quality searches. But the opposing operators get more and more sophisticated, countermeasures that work to half decade ago get circumvented, and the arms race continues.
- ineptech 4y ago
  Lacking a technical fix, isn't this fundamentally a KYC problem? There's an arms race of fraud against banks and financial companies, but it seems like they're managing okay.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    Yes. Holding online advertising to KYC standards would lock most advertisers out of the ecosystem. But most aren't bad actors.
    - manigandham 4y ago
      Why would it lock out most advertisers?
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        Because Google (like other online advertisers and most online services) doesn't have any tighter KYC restrictions than accepting a valid credit card (which, we assume, has already been KYC'd by a bank). Requiring bank-scale KYC on top of that to also work with the advertisers would cut the 4 million advertisers Google currently serves down to a tiny fraction of that (if for no other reason than they don't have infrastructure to background-vet 4 million customers; they don't currently). Perhaps this is the right approach. It would end the days of being able to set up an advertising account in a few hours. Perhaps that's not needed anymore. (This would, of course, mean people giving even more PII to Google. However one feels about that).
        manigandham 4y ago
        > "doesn't have any tighter KYC restrictions" Yes that's the problem. > "Requiring bank-scale KYC..." Nobody said that. The KYC part is an analogy to the financial industry to use procedures to screen out bad actors. But it doesn't need the same requirements. > " they don't have infrastructure to background-vet 4 million customers" KYC is not difficult. Again, banks and finance companies which are far smaller than Google do this all the time, for all of their customers and anyone involved in transactions. This is 100s of millions of clients. > "Perhaps this is the right approach." This approach is far more nuanced than the binary outcome you're interpreting. There are ad and account approvals already. There are different scales requiring different support and sales already. Having more intensive checks as the spending scales is a very simple and effective strategy that can be applied today. The company doesn't care about the number of customers, it cares about the revenue against potential risk (just like every other every business), and currently the risk is acceptable for these ads and advertisers to continue.
        ineptech 4y ago
        There's probably some middle ground between "bank-scale KYC" and "people don't steal credit card numbers, do they?". You really think their current process can't be improved on? With all of their billions, their PhDs, their regulatory capture, finding a way to let in most of the real advertisers while keeping out the scammers isn't just too expensive, it's literally impossible? Despite the fact that they have a near monopoly and the legitimate advertisers will jump through almost any hoop imaginable?
    - ineptech 4y ago
      According to whom? The organization that can't distinguish bad actors from good? I mean, you may be right, but he point is, they could do it, they just choose not to because it would be unprofitable.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        They chose not to because it would lock most advertisers out. That's pretty much counter to everyone's goals. It's analogous to the "stop crime by jailing all of Texas" solution.
        manigandham 4y ago
        That makes no sense. It seems you're confused about KYC. It's a screening process that blocks known bad actors (eg: in finance that is anyone convicted of certain crimes, on watchlists, denied by regions or sanctions, etc). Most advertisers would not be affected at all. By the way, this is already done since Google does check advertiser accounts against various sanctions and watchlists as part of dosing business in every country they operate in.
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        So if it's already done, it's not sufficient to stop bad advertisers?
        manigandham 4y ago
        It’s done for governmental and judicial issues like not working with terrorist organizations. It’s not accounting for bad advertiser history and related behaviors and connections. The point is that it’s not a resource or scale issue (as you keep arguing), but a profit and incentives issue as I said before.
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        So a credit score but for the ad industry.
- manigandham 4y ago
  The risk is carefully managed. These malware ads are on the results page and are allowed until enough issues are raised. In other places, like Google's SSP for the rest of the web, there's far more malware because that reputational risk is pushed to the publishers. Countermeasures aren't needed if adtech just stopped working with known bad actors and recognizable malpractices.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > Countermeasures aren't needed if adtech just stopped working with known bad actors and recognizable malpractices. True, but it looks to me like adtech depends on working with bad actors and mostly ignoring bad practices. It's one of the reasons why I consider the adtech industry itself to be malicious.

shadowgovt 4y ago

Adtech veteran here (from the other side). The trillion dollar corporation has vast teams and assets invested in this project. No temporary monetary incentive is worth the risk of being seen as a likelier vendor of malware than quality searches. But the opposing operators get more and more sophisticated, countermeasures that work to half decade ago get circumvented, and the arms race continues.

ineptech 4y ago
Lacking a technical fix, isn't this fundamentally a KYC problem? There's an arms race of fraud against banks and financial companies, but it seems like they're managing okay.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Yes. Holding online advertising to KYC standards would lock most advertisers out of the ecosystem. But most aren't bad actors.
  - manigandham 4y ago
    Why would it lock out most advertisers?
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      Because Google (like other online advertisers and most online services) doesn't have any tighter KYC restrictions than accepting a valid credit card (which, we assume, has already been KYC'd by a bank). Requiring bank-scale KYC on top of that to also work with the advertisers would cut the 4 million advertisers Google currently serves down to a tiny fraction of that (if for no other reason than they don't have infrastructure to background-vet 4 million customers; they don't currently). Perhaps this is the right approach. It would end the days of being able to set up an advertising account in a few hours. Perhaps that's not needed anymore. (This would, of course, mean people giving even more PII to Google. However one feels about that).
      - manigandham 4y ago
        > "doesn't have any tighter KYC restrictions" Yes that's the problem. > "Requiring bank-scale KYC..." Nobody said that. The KYC part is an analogy to the financial industry to use procedures to screen out bad actors. But it doesn't need the same requirements. > " they don't have infrastructure to background-vet 4 million customers" KYC is not difficult. Again, banks and finance companies which are far smaller than Google do this all the time, for all of their customers and anyone involved in transactions. This is 100s of millions of clients. > "Perhaps this is the right approach." This approach is far more nuanced than the binary outcome you're interpreting. There are ad and account approvals already. There are different scales requiring different support and sales already. Having more intensive checks as the spending scales is a very simple and effective strategy that can be applied today. The company doesn't care about the number of customers, it cares about the revenue against potential risk (just like every other every business), and currently the risk is acceptable for these ads and advertisers to continue.
      - ineptech 4y ago
        There's probably some middle ground between "bank-scale KYC" and "people don't steal credit card numbers, do they?". You really think their current process can't be improved on? With all of their billions, their PhDs, their regulatory capture, finding a way to let in most of the real advertisers while keeping out the scammers isn't just too expensive, it's literally impossible? Despite the fact that they have a near monopoly and the legitimate advertisers will jump through almost any hoop imaginable?
  - ineptech 4y ago
    According to whom? The organization that can't distinguish bad actors from good? I mean, you may be right, but he point is, they could do it, they just choose not to because it would be unprofitable.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      They chose not to because it would lock most advertisers out. That's pretty much counter to everyone's goals. It's analogous to the "stop crime by jailing all of Texas" solution.
      - manigandham 4y ago
        That makes no sense. It seems you're confused about KYC. It's a screening process that blocks known bad actors (eg: in finance that is anyone convicted of certain crimes, on watchlists, denied by regions or sanctions, etc). Most advertisers would not be affected at all. By the way, this is already done since Google does check advertiser accounts against various sanctions and watchlists as part of dosing business in every country they operate in.
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        So if it's already done, it's not sufficient to stop bad advertisers?
        manigandham 4y ago
        It’s done for governmental and judicial issues like not working with terrorist organizations. It’s not accounting for bad advertiser history and related behaviors and connections. The point is that it’s not a resource or scale issue (as you keep arguing), but a profit and incentives issue as I said before.
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        So a credit score but for the ad industry.
manigandham 4y ago
The risk is carefully managed. These malware ads are on the results page and are allowed until enough issues are raised. In other places, like Google's SSP for the rest of the web, there's far more malware because that reputational risk is pushed to the publishers. Countermeasures aren't needed if adtech just stopped working with known bad actors and recognizable malpractices.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > Countermeasures aren't needed if adtech just stopped working with known bad actors and recognizable malpractices. True, but it looks to me like adtech depends on working with bad actors and mostly ignoring bad practices. It's one of the reasons why I consider the adtech industry itself to be malicious.