As the shift to programmatic buying continues to grow, so does the importance for the major players in the industry to team up with smart technology partners who make smart decisions. We have been fighting fraud at Amnet ever since the purchase of our very first impression over three years ago.  Due to recent technological advances, we are now able to greatly reduce the number of fraudulent impressions and/or clicks driven by code.

At Amnet, one of the leaders that we partner with in the fight on fraud is Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager.  As Advertising Age outlined in their May article titled “Inside Google’s Secret War Against Ad Fraud,” Google employs countless team members to reduce and hopefully one day eliminate fraud within the digital advertising ecosystem. Google acquired Spider.io, a company that specialized in preventing online advertising fraud, in 2014 and their seven employees (totaling over 100 today) now lead Google’s “secretive antifraud team.” One of the top benefits that has stemmed from the group to-date is that as soon as they identify non-human traffic, Google refuses to pay the publisher for those impressions and will not charge the advertiser that purchased them. Neal Mohan, Google’s VP of Video and Display Ad Products was quoted, “Sharing our point of view and our stance on [fraud], our level of investment, is something that we think will help the rest of the industry along.”

One of the key benefits of being technology agnostic is that it gives our Amnet team the ability to test numerous anti-fraud partners that are tirelessly working to solve the problem at large. At Amnet, not only do we partner with Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager, but also actively use other third party partners such as Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify and Peer39 to ensure that our clients are achieving the best overall brand safety percentage possible. Amnet additionally works with Trust Metrics, creators of site lists ensuring publisher quality, to develop our company-wide blacklist, applied across all campaigns, which weeds out the most unsavory sites. The Trust Metrics algorithm evaluates every domain that Amnet serves on to detect poor quality, fraud and bots.  To improve on the technology, their team also recently partnered with White Ops, one of the leading technology vendors for fraud detection and prevention.

While Amnet does work with a combination of third parties to ensure optimal brand safety for our clients, we also are constantly monitoring campaign performance and data in real-time on our side. We frequently evaluate site performance, monitor click levels and will often set up strategies such as private marketplaces that we know will hit and often exceed brand safety goals. The key when it comes to brand safety is to remember that there is no one size fits all solution and our approach to weeding out fraudulent impressions and clicks will vary depending on our clients’ goals and objectives. We work with third parties on an as-needed basis and as evidenced by the number of companies that are currently working to eradicate fraud in the marketplace, it is clear that it is a main priority for all no matter where one sits in the LUMAscape.