Online traffic fraud has dominated global news recently. there have been claims that bot-generated activity comprises as much as 25 percent of views of some worldwide campaigns.
In response to this IAB Australia’s Brand Safety Council has issued two white papers to better guide the digital advertising industry on issues around online traffic fraud.
Traffic Fraud: Best Practices for Reducing Risk to Exposure provides much needed guidance to the digital advertising industry and includes critical advice for buyers, publishers and networks to defend against traffic fraud and improve the digital ecosystem. “Understanding Online Traffic Fraud” defines and summarises the issue, and provides a simplified version of steps that can be taken to minimise risk. Both papers are available on the IAB website.
The release of these two papers coincides with the launch last week of the IAB-MFA Agency Advisory Group (IMAAG) which will assist the IAB Brand Safety Council on future initiatives.
Since its formation in April 2014, the Brand Safety Council, which represents publishers, agencies technology partners and clients, has been working on resources to educate the digital advertising industry about how best to tackle Australia’s online traffic fraud problems. In the coming months it will conduct a study to quantify traffic fraud and brand safety risks within the Australian programmatic space.
Operations director at Xaxis and Brand Safety Council member Timothy Whitfield said: “It’s time for key contributors to come together as a single voice and find collective solutions. Brand safety and ad fraud is a war that can be fought and won. I am pleased to be able to work alongside some of the brightest people in the country to tackle the problems head on.”
Alice Manners, CEO of IAB Australia said: “Brand safety is a global and highly topical issue. One of our key priorities is to educate and generate awareness for responsible marketers and publishers while contextualising the size of the issue for the Australian marketplace.”
