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That solves the bad bot problem, it doesn't solve the actual ad fraud problem. There are at least millions, if not tens or hundreds of millions, of ad clicks pe

That solves the bad bot problem, it doesn't solve the actual ad fraud problem. There are at least millions, if not tens or hundreds of millions, of ad clicks per day coming from botnets of ordinary Windows computers on residential ISPs with full JS-executing browsers. You can't detect this activity based on IP address, user agent, script execution, etc. I've seen individual advertisers targeted and get hit by hundreds of ad clicks per day, when they usually only get a dozen or two, every click from a different Comcast/FiOS/TW/RR residential IP, with unique user agents, and varying search phrases that match the ads. It's much, much harder to detect and block that; if we could only see activity on our own individual websites it'd be nearly impossible to tell the normal clicks from the fraudulent activity.

kitcar 13y ago
Agreed - targeting bot nets is a whole other ball game - one that likely can only be combated at the ad server / exchange / DSP level, as they are the only entities with large enough data sets to tease out which machines are infected. From the single advertisers perspective, the easiest solution I can recommend is working with networks which provide eCPA-type bidding* - as then sites which actively buy traffic from bot nets will over time be blacklisted automatically from your campaign. Back when I was on the buy-side of online advertising, we used that "trick" to great success with a major credit card issuer buying billions of impressions. *What I mean by eCPA type bidding is when you tag your conversion page with the network's pixel, and the network uses your conversion data to optimize the campaign on their end to get rid of publishers which send click that never convert. I know there is a better term for this, but it's a Sunday night and I haven't worked in media buying for a few years now...

kitcar 13y ago

Agreed - targeting bot nets is a whole other ball game - one that likely can only be combated at the ad server / exchange / DSP level, as they are the only entities with large enough data sets to tease out which machines are infected. From the single advertisers perspective, the easiest solution I can recommend is working with networks which provide eCPA-type bidding* - as then sites which actively buy traffic from bot nets will over time be blacklisted automatically from your campaign. Back when I was on the buy-side of online advertising, we used that "trick" to great success with a major credit card issuer buying billions of impressions. *What I mean by eCPA type bidding is when you tag your conversion page with the network's pixel, and the network uses your conversion data to optimize the campaign on their end to get rid of publishers which send click that never convert. I know there is a better term for this, but it's a Sunday night and I haven't worked in media buying for a few years now...