Fighting Ad-Fraud: Understanding Monetization of the Internet

Advertisers pay billions every year for ads that are "seen" by bots instead of people. Shailin Dhar used to work for a fraudulent ad network, and when he left, the network sued him, claiming intellectual property over its fraudulent practices. With his long-time friend and CTO Praneet he then founded Method Media Intelligence, a consultancy that by their count uncovered close to $250 million in fraudulent ad spend for clients in 2017.

You'll learn how real-time bidding works and how "soft floors" quietly raise the price you pay. Shailin shows why four verification vendors measured anywhere from 17 % to 90 % fraud on the same traffic, and how fraudsters buy traffic built to pass a specific filter. Using a T-shirt company as a case, Praneet demonstrates how easy it is to fake attribution, and both explain why every intermediary earns the same on fraudulent traffic as on human traffic.