white ops

HUMAN plans to build a deterministic ID from its tracking of more than 20 trillion digital signals per week across 3 billion devices, which will aid attribution for ecommerce.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The New You YouTube is once again the title sponsor of VidCon, Tubefilter reports. It lost that honor last year (after seven years of top billing) when TikTok took its place for the 2022 show, which was the first VidCon following a three-year […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. New Specifications The IAB Tech Lab is rolling out new specs, this time for the buy-side, around transparency and brand safety: big topics of conversation these days. IAB has released two new technology standards — buyers.json and DemandChain Object — that are open for […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. With CTV ad spending in the United States expected to increase from $8.1 billion in 2020 to $11.4 billion this year, scammers are following the money. In the midst of an OTT boom that has created more opportunities for fraudsters, ad fraud detection […]

Subscribe to AdExchanger Talks on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud or wherever you listen to podcasts. The fight against ad fraud is not over, but progress has been made, says Michael Tiffany, president and co-founder of bot detection and cybersecurity company White Ops. For example, back in the day, around 2012 through 2014, purchasing […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. White Hot The Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs is leading a deal to buy bot detection and anti-fraud company White Ops, Business Insider scoops. Goldman is being joined in the deal by VC firm ClearSky Security and investment firm NightDragon. The trio will […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Being Human White Ops is now the company formerly known as White Ops. The traffic verification provider is changing its name due to the “toxic association of good and bad with color and race,” wrote CEO Tamer Hassan in a blog post. Hassan said in the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Bot-And-Mouse Game The low-hanging fruit of ad fraud is mostly gone. But more sophisticated bad actors are still active. Protected Media identified an in-app bot fraud network, dubbed “Hydra,” that siphoned off an estimated $100 million, Business Insider reports. “It’s the most disciplined operation […]

White Ops has uncovered a mobile ad fraud operation with unusually sophisticated and patient tactics to embed itself in mobile phones, the company said Thursday. The investigation, dubbed CHARTREUSEBLUR (most of the 29 perpetrating apps used “blur” in the name, and apparently the White Ops threat research team is fond of the liqueur chartreuse), rounded […]

Until now, if an ad fraud scam was uncovered, the criminals behind it would usually fade back into the shadows with impunity, and shortly thereafter, they’d be back at it again – the seemingly eternal game of Whac-A-Mole. This time, there’s accountability. Two global botnets, Methbot and 3ve, are no more, and there are real people […]

Video supply-side platform Beachfront Media is expanding its partnership with White Ops, the digital verification vendor that specializes in bot detection, to include over-the-top (OTT) inventory. All inventory passing through Beachfront’s marketplace is now vetted and verified by White Ops, according to Frank Sinton, Beachfront’s founder and chief product officer. But is OTT fraud a […]

Self-styled gentleman hacker Michael Tiffany is standing down as chief exec of White Ops. On Wednesday, the company announced that Tiffany, who co-founded White Ops in 2013, is transitioning to the president role, where he’ll work more closely with the engineers focusing on product innovation and on evangelizing fraud prevention in the industry. Sandeep Swadia, […]

Wait, there’s good news in the fight against ad fraud? The global monetary impact of ad fraud is expected to go down this year, the amount of mobile fraud happening in the ecosystem is much lower than feared and programmatic can be just as safe as direct-sold if buyers implement the right security measures. The […]

On Tuesday, White Ops exposed a sophisticated browser-based botnet called Methbot that was reportedly stealing somewhere between $3 million and $5 million of US-based video ad spend a day. The story developed quickly after that. Some large, well-known exchanges have come out to say they’ve had little or no exposure to Methbot. And a few […]

Meet Methbot, the Russian hacking operation that’s costing advertisers between $3 million and $5 million a day. At the very least, that’s a little over $1 billion a year – a hefty chunk of the ad industry’s estimated $7.2 billion annual ad fraud problem. White Ops first uncovered the browser-based botnet in September 2015, when it […]

Over-the-top (OTT) television is at an inflection point. While it’s a promising way for media owners to capitalize on changing consumer consumption habits – the number of connected TV users totaled 181.8 million viewers in 2016, a 20% year-over-year increase, according to eMarketer – with reward comes risk. OTT’s lucrative CPMs could also attract bad […]

While the online advertising trade groups have created anti-fraud programs and exchanges have instituted inventory standards, fraud is still on the rise. AdExchanger reached out to some of the people in the trenches about where the digital ad tech and media ecosystem stands now and how progress can be made. Click below for their responses. […]

Blood in the water brings sharks, and high CPMs bring bots. And political spenders, who often outbid brands on targeted inventory, are uniquely vulnerable to digital fraud and bots. “All the ingredients that typically happen for fraud are a part of the political marketplace,” said Mark Schlosser, senior sales director at the ad fraud security […]

Video platform TubeMogul sees itself as a bastion for brand advertisers and, beginning in April, it’s putting its money where its mouth is. The company will roll out a Non-Human Traffic Credit Program, an automatic make good on all video impressions it buys on the open exchange that have been identified as fake or fraudulent. In […]

Battle cries and breast beating notwithstanding, the industry doesn’t seem to be doing all that much to tackle bot fraud, which is expected to take a $7.2 billion bite out of ad budgets in 2016. That’s according to research released on Tuesday by the Association of National Advertisers and bot detection firm White Ops. It’s […]

Pubs and brands have complained about programmatic inventory on open exchanges for years, but a renewed focus on inventory quality is gaining traction. AppNexus has long positioned itself as the platform for ad networks, but it reversed its policy in recent weeks by removing ad networks that don’t provide direct publisher or seller relationships. Shortly […]

The mistaken belief that there’s an infinite supply of targetable inventory on the Internet keeps fraud viable. That’s a key takeaway from a presentation last Thursday by Videology and White Ops at Videology’s New York City office, following a partnership between the two companies in May. “Online ad spending spikes up in November and December,” […]

2014 was the year advertisers collectively asked the question, “How much?” As in, viewability aside, how much ad fraud is actually out there? Some of the numbers bandied about, often by the fraud vendors themselves, were alarming to say the least. A report released by cyber-security startup MdotLabs in October 2013 before it was acquired […]

  The rise of automation has made the ad-buying and selling process more informed and efficient, but it’s also provided an outlet for fraudsters to profit. After all, if machines conduct more transactions that used to take place between two humans over the phone, there’s less human oversight. Additionally, ad ops teams, excited by the […]

The results are in – and they’re not pretty. “I’ve had my eyes opened and it’s frightening,” said Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), which released the fruits of its anti-fraud study on Tuesday. The work was conducted in conjunction with online ad security firm White Ops as part […]

How bad a problem is online ad fraud, and how should the buy and sell sides divvy the responsibility to combat it? This question formed the crux of the panel “New Methods For Defeating Fraud In The Programmatic Era,” moderated by WPP’s Team Detroit chief digital officer, Kurt Unkel, at Wednesday’s Programmatic I/O conference in New […]

This is the sixth in a series of interviews with vendors combating the problem of ad fraud. Other companies participating in this series include Moat, Telemetry, Sizmek, comScore, Dstillery and Asia RTB. Read previous interviews with DoubleVerify, Forensiq, Integral Ad Science, PubChecker and Videology. When it comes to catching bots, higher walls and better locks […]

There’s a digital ad fraud outbreak – one that gobbles up roughly $14 billion in advertising spend and between 25 and 50% of ad spend per campaign. White Ops CEO and cofounder Michael Tiffany likens the landscape to a cholera outbreak. Bots cause their devastation in a certain corner of the web and move on. White […]