‘Methbot: The beginning of the end for digital ad fraud’ – Martech Today
Alex Bornyakov says, “The latest ad fraud scandal to hit the digital advertising world has been exposed, and its name is Methbot.
A Russia-based botnet with data centers in the Netherlands and the United States, this digital-age criminal network deploys sophisticated tricks to defraud advertisers, brands and media companies.
Now that security firm White Ops has penetrated the operation and made its methods public, measures can be taken to prevent Methbot quietly siphoning off advertising dollars. But how did the fraudulent operation become so profitable, and what does its discovery mean for the digital advertising industry?
Methbot was extraordinarily successful because it appeared to provide something that is scarce within the digital ecosystem: large volumes of low-cost premium video inventory. Over 6,000 domains and 250,000 specific URLs were spoofed to trick advertisers into thinking they were buying video placements on premium publisher sites. Fake ad impressions were then generated on these domains using over 500,000 IP addresses”.
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