Online fraud-prevention firm White Ops is releasing data today that will enable online advertisers and ad marketplaces to block the efforts of the group, which is cashing in on its intimate knowledge of the automated infrastructure that controls the buying and selling of video ads.
Controlled by a single group based in Russia and operating out of data centers in the US and Netherlands, this “bot farm” generates $3 to $5 million in fraudulent revenue per day by targeting the premium video advertising ecosystem.
When someone clicks on a video that’s posted to a Web page, the video is often preceded by a short advertising video known as pre-roll. The pre-roll slot is sold realtime – within 100 milliseconds – via an automated auction. That click to request the video is what initiates the ad auction, and the browser directly receives the pre-roll from the advertiser that wins, says White Ops CEO Michael Tiffany.
The system relies on information provided by the browser to verify what site the browser user is visiting and that it actually receives the pre-roll ad. “The ecosystem believes what the browser says about what site you’re at,” he says.
