“Many clients have asked me to assess and recommend fraud detection and mitigation companies. This deck is intended to provide clients an objective and independent point of view and commentary on the known players in the digital ad fraud space.”

1. Augustine Fou- 1 -
Independent Review of
Anti-Fraud Companies
Dr. Augustine Fou
http://linkd.in/augustinefou
acfou @mktsci .com
July 2014

2. Augustine Fou- 2 -
Author’s Commentary
“Many clients have asked me to assess and
recommend fraud detection and mitigation
companies. In recent months we’ve seen a huge
proliferation of these services so this deck is
meant to provide clients an objective and
independent point of view and commentary on
the known players in the digital ad fraud space.”
-- Dr. Augustine Fou

3. Augustine Fou- 3 -
Integral Ad Science Review
Integral Ad Science
Brand safety via analyzing placements of ads
Source: Integral Ads
Why we like it:
Using their collected
databases of blacklisted
sites and suspicious
“cookies” they can help
advertisers decide
when NOT to serve the
ad, in milliseconds,
when a bid request
comes though an ad
exchange.

4. Augustine Fou- 4 -
Solve Media Review
Solve Media's proprietary TYPE-IN™
advertising guarantees your messaging
won't be ignored—because it can't be.
Our simple, effective and memorable
TYPE-IN™ advertising lets users type
in brand messages where they interact
on web pages and mobile apps—
replacing difficult CAPTCHAs,
allowing people to skip video pre-roll
ads, or unlocking access to valuable
mobile experiences. The result:
superior brand lift. Here's how:
Solve Media
Human detection via CAPTCHAs; ad delivery to real humans
Why we like it:
If a user has solved a
CAPTCHA, it is likely to
be a human user. So this
information can be use by
advertisers and their ad
networks to explicitly
serve ads to these users
(rather than unknown or
non-human visitors)

5. Augustine Fou- 5 -
RocketFuel review
Review of rocketfuel
RocketFuelCampaign optimization (mainly display ads) that detect and
mitigate ad impressions generated by bots, to improve ROI
Why we like it:
RocketFuel is an optimizer
that is interoperable with
all ad networks (can place
ads across all networks);
using machine learning it
can continuously optimize
campaigns while in-flight
and evolve bot rejection
(don’t serve ads to them)
in real-time.

6. Augustine Fou- 6 -
WhiteOps Review
WhiteOps
Javascript-based detection platform installed by legit publishers
to detect bot activity on the sites.
Mr. Tiffany said traffic fraud can be found not only on smaller
sites serving as shells to game ad exchanges, but on the domains
of premium publishers as well.
"What we do know is that it's not just a problem hiding out in the
long tail, it's not just a problem of bogus websites," he said.
"Bots have infiltrated traffic systems across the ecosystem and
end up at some premium, name brand publishers."
Source: AdAge - Premium Publishers Are Getting Victimized By Traffic Fraud, Too Feb 2014

7. Augustine Fou- 7 -
DoubleVerify Review
Review of DoubleVerify
DoubleVerify
Ad verification technology – placement, viewability, bot detect
Source: http://www.doubleverify.com/

8. Augustine Fou- 8 -
AreYouAHuman review
Review of AreYouAHuman
AreYouAHuman
Drag-and-drop actions that reinforce brand message and prove
human user interacting with ad.

9. Augustine Fou- 9 -
Forensiq Review
Review of Forensiq
Forensiq
Eliminate impression fraud, click fraud, affiliate fraud, and
cookie stuffing

10. Augustine Fou- 10 -
Oopgo review
Review of oopgo
Oopgo
Analyze visitor actions on site (e.g. mouse movements) to
mitigate fraud and improve usability.

11. Augustine Fou- 11 -
mDotlabs review
Review of mdotlabs
mDotlabs
We use signal processing, statistics,
machine learning and applied math to
analyze every impression delivered to
an online advertisement. AdSecure
identifies a variety of malicious
activities including bots, click farms,
pay-per-view networks and a growing
list of sophisticated traffic-generation
techniques.
Detect and analyze visitors to sites for non-human activity

12. Augustine Fou- 12 -
Pixalate Review
Review of pixalate
Pixalate
Fraud reporting and blocking, Fraud Graph and Fraud
Analytics, Predictive Fraud blocking – all in real time

13. Augustine Fou- 13 -
Adometry (Google)
• Helps advertisers manage
and measure their media
spend across both online
and digital media channels
• Unifies data sources to
provide continuous
performance improvement
and yielding returns on ad
spend
• Helps marketers solve big
data challenges and
achieve optimal results via
advanced data mining
techniques

14. Augustine Fou- 14 -
Improvely review
Review of improvely
Improvely
• Identifies the source of every signup or sale on website
• Tracks and monitors ads - inspects each click for suspicious activity

15. Augustine Fou- 15 -
PageFair review
Reviewof pagefair
PageFair
Measures how many visitors block ads and fixes the problem
by implementing non-intrusive ads just for adblockers

16. Augustine Fou- 16 -
FraudLogix review
Review of fraudlogix
FraudLogix
Uses on-page javascript to detect visitor characteristics,
combined with behavioral and pooled data to assess threat.

17. Augustine Fou- 17 -
DistilNetworks review
Review of distil networks
DistilNetworks
Detection of bots and various forms of fraud, with mitigation
technology at the network/ISP level

18. Augustine Fou- 18 -
Spider.io (Google)
Advanced technical analysis of web pages and network activity
that detects bot activity and how that is used for ad fraud.
We have previously shown how malware-driven traffic across websites costs display
advertisers millions of dollars per month [1]. We have also shown how easy it is to
generate this type of fake traffic—with fewer than 100 lines of C++ code [2]. In this
post we provide the first case study to show how a well known malware rootkit is
being used by cyber criminals today specifically to defraud online display advertisers.
The case study is a display advertising analogue of a click-fraud study by Miller et al.
[3].
In our investigations into the origins of malware-driven traffic across websites we
discovered a TDSS rootkit with dll32.dll and dll64.dll payloads. TDSS has been
described by Kaspersky as “the most sophisticated threat today” [4]. In this post we
show how hijacked PCs controlled by these TDSS payloads impersonate real website
visitors across target webpages on which display ad inventory is being sold. We show
in this post how this fake traffic is being sold to publishers today through the ClickIce
ad exchange. We show further in this post that some unscrupulous publishers are not
just knowingly buying this fake traffic. They are in fact optimising their webpage
layouts for this fake traffic.
We recorded activity on a hijacked PC controlled by one of these payloads. We have
included this below.
Source: http://www.spider.io/blog/2013/12/cyber-criminals-defraud-display-advertisers-with-tdss/

19. Augustine Fou- 19 -
Dr. Augustine Fou – Digital Forensics
“I advise clients on optimizing advertising
across all channels. Using advanced
technical forensic techniques and tchnology
tools from anti-fraud companies like these,
we detect and mitigate ad fraud and waste
and increase ROI.”
FORMER CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, HCG (OMNICOM)
MCKINSEY CONSULTANT
CLIENT SIDE / AGENCY SIDE EXPERIENCE
PROFESSOR AND COLUMNIST
ENTREPRENEUR / SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
PHD MATERIALS SCIENCE (MIT '95) AT AGE 23
@acfou
ClickZ Articles: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-clickz
Slideshares: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-slideshares
LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/augustinefou

20. Augustine Fou- 20 -
APPENDIX

21. Augustine Fou- 21 -
YouTube (Google)
Why we like it:
Video ads are usually sold
on CPM basis but in the case
of YouTube, the advertiser
doesn’t have to pay unless
the user does not skip the ad
(i.e. they were willing to
watch it). So this is highly
cost efficient for advertisers.
With video ads you pay only when
someone chooses to watch your ad, so
you don't waste money advertising to
people who aren't interested in your
business.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/yt/advertise/why-it-works.html

22. Augustine Fou- 22 -
Adwords (Google)
The vast majority of all invalid clicks on AdWords
ads are caught by our online filters. These filters are
constantly being updated and react to a wide variety
of traffic patterns and indications of click fraud
attacks. On average, invalid clicks account for less
than 10% of all clicks on AdWords ads. At our
current revenue run rate, the aggregate value of the
clicks that we've identified as suspicious or invalid
and excluded from what we've charged advertisers
is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Source: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2454071
Why we like it:
Google takes vigorous
action to not only mitigate
click fraud; but it is also
very good at detecting
invalid clicks and not
charging the advertiser for
them. Furthermore, there is
little fraud in the search ads
shown on the main Google
property.