Database Reference
In-Depth Information
And then the third challenge is the immense amount of fraud in ad exchanges.
When we talk about ad exchanges, we are basically talking about a market-
place, which is a place for programmatic buying and selling of display advertis-
ing. Like any marketplace, whether it is eBay or the stock exchange or display
advertising, there is, of course, a certain part of the market that is almost
constantly attempting to take advantage of the system. In display advertising,
it is harder to keep track of what is going wrong because the customer is not
complaining as loudly. If I am on eBay and I buy something, which then does
not show up, am I going to complain? Yes, and eBay will take care of it. But if
the customer is a marketer that shows an ad and people never see it, how
would they ever know? The public outcry is not quite there, so it is a more
difficult problem in that respect.
It is also technically more challenging to very clearly say, “This is an instance
of fraud, whereas this other one is probably okay.” It is a challenge that as an
industry we will have to face together. We will probably have to collaborate
and raise the perception of it because most metrics that marketers look at
are very easy to fake.
“Clicks” used to be one of those. A lot of the “clicks” we see are clearly not
natural or are coming from different countries than from where the ad was
shown in. I think it is easier to observe click fraud. When it comes to the
question of whether there is really a person on the other side, that is when it
gets harder. We are now moving to visibility and other ways to verify a person
is really there. My guess is that this can be faked, too. Which makes it very
much like the old adversarial problem of spam filtering—every time you build
a better model, your opponent is trying to figure out how to beat your better
model. Which turns the game into a game of escalation. It will keep the data
scientists in business, I guess.
Gutierrez:
What really drives this problem of fraud?
Perlich:
One of the main reasons for the fraud problem is the highly frag-
mented nature of the industry. There are the marketers themselves. They have
historically been relying on agencies to help them execute campaigns. Then
there is the creative part—trying to package the message of the brand for
some audience. Then you have all the different types of media including not
just print, TV, online, and social, but even out of home—basically billboards—
all siloed out as well because it is a completely different form of measurement
and interaction. And now we are adding to the already existing layer of indus-
try participants, data providers, and real-time exchanges. On top of which live
firms like Dstillery, who are then asked to do the targeting. As you can imag-
ine, every participant has a slightly different perspective on what the problem
is, where it is occurring, and how to solve it. And, not only that, they also have
very different incentives as to what they should really be achieving.
