One in five ad-serving websites is visited exclusively by fraud bots
May 24, 2017 | Uncategorized
A growing part of the internet is devoted entirely to fraudulent advertising. According to a new report by White Ops, ad-fraud sites make up roughly 20 percent of ad-serving sites on the web, despite having no human traffic whatsoever. The sites make money entirely from traffic bots, designed to mimic human visits to generate ad revenue for the sites’ creators.
Traffic bots have long been a problem for web advertising, also known as “click fraud.” The good news is that, while it remains a billion-dollar industry, advertisers are slowly getting wise to the tricks. According to White Ops, ad-fraud sites are on track to make $6.5 billion in 2017, down from $7.2 billion the previous year.
The problem is particularly acute for desktop video…
