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DoubleVerify says public domain apps used for CTV ad fraud – TechCrunch:
The team at DoubleVerify, a company that helps advertisers eliminate fraud and ensure brand safety, said that it's recently identified a new tactic used by ad fraudsters seeking to make money on internet-connected TVs.
Senior Vice President of Product Management Roy Rosenfeld said that it's harder for those fraudsters to create a legitimate-looking TV app — at least compared to the web and mobile, where "you can just put up a site [or app] to generate content." For a connected TV app, you need lots of video, which can be costly and time-consuming to produce.
"What these guys have started to do is take old content that's in the public domain and package that in fancy-looking CTV apps that they submit to the platform," Rosenfeld said. "But at the end of the day, no one is really watching the old westerns or anything like that. This is just a vehicle to get into the app stores."
As noted in a new report from the company (which will soon be available online), DoubleVerify said it has identified more than 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps in the past 18 months, with more than half of that coming in 2020.
CTV - A generic term for a Connected TeleVision(TV)
[Ed Note - Updated to remove a stray quote and add a definition for CTV]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @02:22PM (7 children)
If it only hurts advertisers, do I care?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @02:24PM (1 child)
First they came for the advertisers and I didn't say anything . . . .
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @11:27PM
To be honest, I'd be cheering them on...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 11 2020, @02:46PM (1 child)
That, exactly.
The entire advertising industry is built on fraud and deception. We should care that fraudsters give the advertisers some of their own?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday August 11 2020, @09:39PM
Well, kinda, you only get more fraud. The *do as I say* thing has some merit
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @04:54PM (2 children)
If it just hurt advertisers, I wouldn't care; but it probably puts money in the pockets of organized crime or other bad actors. Also, simply hurting advertisers just ups the ante in the arms race. Blocking scripts? Hello interstitials. DVR? Hello crawls, product placements, etc. Submitted for your consideration, that hurting advertisers isn't good because it just breeds stronger advertising tactics. Unless you *kill* advertising, it isn't going away, and killing it seems way too hard. Even our "community" radio can't resist having "underwriters" who get "mentioned". Those are ads, and sometimes the announcers catch themselves saying that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @09:06PM
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday August 12 2020, @01:12AM
When I was a kid, a long, long time ago, my uncle allowed a bunch of paper wasps to construct their nest right over the front door.
Now, I was afraid of those wasps and wanted my uncle to do something about them.
But my uncle liked them.
He had a bigger problem with door to door salesmen. And no doorbell. They had to knock. The family knew to use the back door if we had to be let in. The salesmen did not.
Howls of laughter routinely arose around the family dinner table when salesmen, arriving during the family dinner ( as was customary during those days), banged away on the door, then disappeared in a big hurry, making much noise.
My uncle claimed one of them left a trail of brushes over 100 feet long, and he never had to buy brushes since.
Somehow, the wasps always left us alone, and we knew better than to make commotion at the front door.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]