Creating a culture club builds ownership of teamwork
Workplace cultures are the sum of everyone’s beliefs, behaviours, attitudes and skills. This means that no single person is responsible for culture, it belongs to the team.
IAS Threat Lab calls for industry to update Ads.txt files to stop growing bot scheme responsible for millions of dollars in ad fraud
Integral Ad Science (IAS), the digital ad verification outfit, has issued a warning to the ad industry about a large-scale ad fraud scheme which produces fake browser data and fabricated URLs in order to steal advertisers’ media spend.
IAS estimates the 404bot scheme has cost the industry upwards of US$15 million dollars and has affected over 1.5 billion video ads. According to its conservative estimates, during a recent period of high activity, between April and September 2019, the fraud scheme affected over 600 million ads.
“The 404bot has been active since 2018 and its unchecked growth now warrants industry action,” said head of IAS Threat Lab, Evgeny Shmelkov.
Earlier this year, IAS Threat Lab uncovered a large-scale ad fraud scheme in which a network of infected devices was being used to generate billions of ad calls to fake URLs - a practice known as domain spoofing - and inspired the fraud scheme’s name, 404bot.
The domain spoofing operation was widespread several years ago and to combat the ad fraud, IAB Technology Lab started the ‘authorised digital sellers' initiative, known as Ads.txt, which allows an adtech player to publicly declare other companies that are authorised to sell its digital inventory.
According to IAS, Ads.txt has had widespread adoption; however, domain spoofing continues to plague the online ad space and it claims some publishers don’t use Ads.txt properly or fail to properly vet the partners on the Ads.txt list.
The IAS Threat Lab continually monitors for bot activity and noticed a rise in domain spoofing, believed to be generated by a single botnet. After a sustained period of monitoring, IAS felt the 404bot had been active for too long, with no clear signs of it being shut down, and required a warning to operators in the ad-tech ecosystem to clean up their inventories.
“Publishers have done an excellent job in implementing Ads.txt, but what we are learning from this bot is that it is crucial to continuously audit and update Ads.txt files.”
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, follow our regular updates via CMO Australia's Linkedin company page, or join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia.
In this latest episode of our conversations over a cuppa with CMO, we catch up with the delightful Pip Arthur, Microsoft Australia's chief marketing officer and communications director, to talk about thinking differently, delivering on B2B connection in the crisis, brand purpose and marketing transformation.
Workplace cultures are the sum of everyone’s beliefs, behaviours, attitudes and skills. This means that no single person is responsible for culture, it belongs to the team.
In 2020, brands did something they’d never done before: They spoke up about race.
‘Business as unusual’ is a term my organisation has adopted to describe the professional aftermath of COVID-19 and the rest of the tragic events this year. Social distancing, perspex screens at counters and masks in all manner of situations have introduced us to a world we were never familiar with. But, as we keep being reminded, this is the new normal. This is the world we created. Yet we also have the opportunity to create something else.
In these tough times finding an earning opportunity that can be weaved into your lifestyle is hard. Doordash fits the bill nicely until y...
Fred Lawrence
DoorDash launches in Australia
Hello , great article!Fake followers have really become a big issue that needs to be identified and bring to an end.You can also include ...
Caitlyn Davis
Fake Twitter-follower market is adapting, growing, and getting ever cheaper
Did anyone proofread this document before it was published?
Beau Ushay
CMO Momentum 2020: How to embrace agile marketing
he decision to limit the initial version of the code to two US companies is discriminatory and will inevitably give an unfair advantage t...
Azeem Sohail
Google hits out at ACCC draft code of conduct for news media negotiations
You’re a warrior woman from way back. Just let the muscle memory take over!
Hannah Sturrock
Why fear trumps marketing theory - Marketing edge - CMO Australia