As the weather heated up this week, so did the debate on digital media industry topics like ad fraud (copyright infringement sites in particular), programmatic buying opportunities for growth and ad viewability at the IAB’s Ad Technology Marketplace event. Here at DoubleVerify we applaud the sentiments expressed throughout the event, with numerous calls to action for the industry to all do its part to eliminate fraudulent activity in digital advertising, and to focus on gaining more transparency online.

If what Youssef Squali from Cantor Fitzgerald predicted comes to fruition, the scale of the RTB market will be tremendous, with 30-50% of total ad spendingover the next five years. As this is where we see a majority of ad fraud occurring, there needs to be a serious undertaking by all the companies in this space to clean it up. There are solutions that can be done, but there needs be a strong effort put forth from all to build a better industry.

This was again re-iterated by Chris Paul, VivaKi and Penry Price, Media6Degrees during their fraud discussion where they called on every part of the ecosystem to participate in solving the issue. With our unique market position of being an independent third party, this is where we see we can make the most impact to elevate the industry, unlocking enormous value for advertisers to see the truth in digital advertising. We work with both buyers and sellers without conflicting interests for other data points, making our position in the market a strong leadership foundation to help resolve some of the challenges that exist today.

Our data scientists in our ad fraud detection lab work round the clock to identify fraudulent activities across the web to eliminate impressions from appearing on fraud sites, a figure that can go as high as 30% of a campaign in some cases. The most significant ad fraud we’ve uncovered to date was surrounding copyright infringement sites, where about 1200 sites were identified and blocked. You can read more details about the findings in our whitepaper. Bringing more transparency to the RTB market is a critical step forward and a necessary undertaking for us (as an industry) to achieve. After all, when the industry does better, we all benefit.