Today the Wall Street Journal ran an article about the newest form of fraud to hit online advertising – invisible ads.  Harvard Business School assistant professor Ben Edelman discovered the ads, which were found on websites in several popular ad networks.

Ben’s a great guy and amazing watchdog, but we as an industry – and especially those of us in the ad network business – cannot rely on him to discover fraudsters and digital criminals. We need to commit to a higher standard of service and transparency.

Of course this is easier said than done - as Emily Steel points out, a campaign can appear on thousands of sites reporting is not commonly offered at the site level, sites can change their code and content at a moment’s notice, and tracking down that elusive screenshot of a geo or behaviorally targeted campaign can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. 

So what can we do to make sure we beat Mr. Edelman to the punch, and protect the brands with whom we do business? 

We’ve always believed that the answer lies in:

Site selection mechanisms:  Humans are a critical piece in the fraud prevention pie.  Every site needs to be approved and accepted by the network builder.

Transparency:  Every network should provide visibility into its network of sites across the Web.  If you cannot view or see this list, you don’t know where your ads are being distributed.  Every agency should demand total transparency into a network’s site list, and they should only purchase from those that provide this visibility.

Higher Accountability for Ad Ops:  Buying at a lower price point has pitfalls, one of the most significant being fraud and lack of attention to individual publishers within individual campaigns.  Premium buys pay for and get more attention – resulting in  higher quality campaigns that are tremendously more trustworthy. 

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