Many websites are financed by advertising revenue, and many businesses invest significant sums of money in ads in the hopes of improving profitability. Any effort to mislead online advertising systems for monetary advantage therefore has a negative effect on both businesses and websites.
Online ads are heavily reliant on algorithmic exchanges to connect content with prospective clients. Ad fraud exploits these automated systems to impersonate actual users and profit from the broadcast of ads to non-existent clients. Bots are just one of a range of tactics used to deceive ad networks and advertisers into paying them.
As a result, marketers are stuck paying for ads that are shown to fake visitors. On the other hand, publishers will see an unusual rise in payments. Marketers will eventually begin to analyse the number of ads they think have been shown to invalid traffic (IVT). Rates of IVT will be detected by advertisement exchanges, and if they're unusually...