Every ad you see was sold in an auction that took less than a tenth of a second. We follow that machine live, from the news, the stocks and the deals down to the bots trying to cheat it, and explain every part in plain English.
Advertisers in South Africa are reportedly losing as much as R12 billion each year due to ad fraud. This highlights the significant financial impact of fraudulent activity in the country's digital advertising market.
Why it matters: Ad fraud drains budgets and undermines trust in digital advertising, making it harder for brands to reach real audiences and measure campaign effectiveness.
OpenX has hired John Rogers, a former Roku executive, to serve as Senior Vice President of Global Publisher Development. Rogers will oversee efforts to expand and strengthen relationships with publishers worldwide.
AppLovin has reported robust growth for the second quarter, with its valuation remaining under $300 per share. Despite these positive results, the market's reaction has been mixed, reflecting uncertainty among investors.
New research from IAB and Grocery TV indicates that in-store media is expanding its role, moving past traditional shopper marketing strategies. The findings suggest retailers are leveraging in-store screens and digital displays for broader…
Despite advances in digital ad buying and optimization, many agencies still rely on manual processes for financial reconciliation. This inefficiency can reduce agency profit margins and slow down operations, highlighting a gap between…
CommerceIQ has introduced an AI-driven solution to help manage retail media campaigns on Chewy Ads. This tool aims to optimize advertising performance for brands selling on the Chewy platform.
Comcast Advertising reports that running TV ad campaigns across multiple screens leads to a doubling of incremental return on ad spend and increased website visits. The findings highlight the effectiveness of multiscreen strategies for…
A recent study by the WFA highlights a trend among global brands moving away from traditional agency fee structures based on labor hours or full-time equivalents. This shift reflects concerns that such models do not accurately represent…
Lacuna has launched a new platform designed to unify various aspects of programmatic advertising into a single ecosystem. The offering aims to streamline the buying, selling, and management of digital ads for advertisers and publishers.
Haleon is moving into programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising, signaling a shift beyond traditional small screen formats. This approach allows the company to automate and optimize ad placements on digital billboards and screens…
New research indicates that connected TV (CTV) now reaches 35.4 million people in Italy. This milestone highlights the growing adoption of internet-enabled television platforms among Italian viewers.
Zefr and Reddit have formed a partnership aimed at providing advertisers with more detailed insights into their campaigns. This collaboration is expected to help brands better understand the performance and context of their ads on Reddit.
A European television initiative has outlined new proposals aimed at addressing obstacles in programmatic advertising for TV. The group seeks to improve how automated ad buying works across the region’s broadcasters.
12 fraud and invalid-traffic stories this week, up 11 on last week.
Advertisers in South Africa are reportedly losing as much as R12 billion each year due to ad fraud. This highlights the significant financial impact of fraudulent activity in the country's digital advertising market.
TikTok has initiated measures to remove and restrict scam ads that promise users payment for simple tasks or participation. The platform is targeting deceptive advertising practices to protect its users from fraudulent schemes.
DataBeat analysis shows that resellers added 44,600 new ads.txt lines, compared to 10,300 for direct sellers, across the top 50,000 US publishers. Low-traffic sites contributed most of the growth, and nearly half of Tier 1 SSP domains…
Instances of invalid traffic and click fraud have been detected affecting ads related to ChatGPT. This development highlights ongoing challenges in ensuring ad quality and combating fraudulent activity in digital advertising.
Eight tracks, written for someone who has never heard the word “programmatic”, going all the way down to bid shading and SSAI spoofing.
How the free internet gets paid, explained from zero.
5 lessonsbeginnerThe 100-millisecond auction, the pipes around it and where the money goes.
7 lessonsintermediateCookies, IDs, clean rooms and consent: how ads know (or guess) who you are.
5 lessonsintermediateBots, spoofing, fake views and the people who catch them, explained all the way down
8 lessonsintermediateWas the ad seen, was it safe, and did it actually work?
5 lessonsintermediateEvery screen, speaker and billboard has its own plumbing, pricing and fraud risks.
6 lessonsintermediateFollow the ad dollar: fees, business models, earnings and who owns whom
5 lessonsadvancedThe rulebooks of ad tech: industry standards, supply-chain files, antitrust and privacy law
4 lessonsadvancedThree free Specialist certificates. Earn all three and you are awarded the Yokozuna, sumo’s highest rank.
Animated walk-throughs of the machinery. Press play, or step through one move at a time.
What happens between you opening a web page and an ad appearing: a real-time auction that finishes faster than a blink.
8 stepsAnimatedWhy publishers moved from asking buyers one at a time to asking them all at once, and how it raised their revenue.
6 stepsAnimatedFollow one dollar of programmatic spend from a brand to a publisher, and see who takes a cut along the way.
7 stepsAnimatedThe layers of defence between a bot and an advertiser’s budget: lists, signals, behaviour and after-the-fact audits.
7 stepsAnimatedHow a buyer checks that the seller really is allowed to sell a site’s ads, and why it defeats domain spoofing.
6 stepsAnimatedServer-side ad insertion stitches ads into streams. The same trick, faked, is one of the costliest frauds in streaming.
6 stepsAnimatedads.txt (Authorized Digital Sellers) is a public text file on a website's domain listing which ad sellers and accounts are authorised to sell that website's ad inventory.
ads.txt is like a list on a band's official website of the only ticket outlets authorised to sell their concert tickets: anyone else selling is suspect.
The questions people ask most, answered in a paragraph.
Invalid traffic (IVT) is any ad impression, click or visit that was not generated by a real person with a genuine chance of seeing the ad. It includes harmless automation such as search-engine crawlers as well as deliberate fraud like bots, hidden ads and spoofed websites. Advertisers should not pay for it, so the industry filters and measures it.
GIVT (general invalid traffic) is non-human traffic that can be caught with simple lists and rules, such as known crawlers, data-center IP addresses and self-declared bots. SIVT (sophisticated invalid traffic) is traffic built to look human, such as hijacked devices, residential-proxy bots, spoofed apps and hidden ads, and it needs advanced analytics to detect.
Nobody knows precisely; published estimates range from a few billion to more than $80 billion a year depending on methodology. Juniper Research estimated $84 billion (22% of online ad spend) was lost in 2023, rising to $172 billion by 2028. Earlier ANA and White Ops studies put losses nearer $6 billion. All of these are modelled estimates, not audited totals.
Look for numbers that do not behave like people: very high click-through rates with near-zero conversions, sessions lasting a second or two, traffic spikes at odd hours, clusters of identical devices or browsers, and visits from data centers or unexpected countries. The reliable answer comes from an independent IVT measurement or verification tool rather than from the seller's own reports.
The day’s ad tech news in plain English, market movers, new deals, an IVT watch and one concept to learn. Plus breaking alerts when something big happens.