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: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday August 11 2020, @01:52PM (2 children)
The real news here is that stupid internet-connected TVs WATCH YOU!.
But nobody else on this planet has enough brain cells to care.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday August 11 2020, @03:08PM (1 child)
Is that really news though? If so we should probably also have some headlines about how water flows downhill...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @07:44PM
It would be news to 99.9999% of the population of this planet. Likewise the same have no idea which way water flows, and they still believe in barbaric imaginary magic sky beings. This planet is shit.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Tuesday August 11 2020, @02:05PM (2 children)
Old westerns (are we talking like Rawhide?), I'd still rather watch that then most things available on TV today. Not that I would watch, it's just if I had to chose.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 11 2020, @02:49PM (1 child)
Agreed. I recently clicked on a couple of videos, and watched an ancient episode of Combat with Vic Morrow and the gang. The individual episode was broken into three parts. No adverts, just the video, fed in three parts. Kinda nice. But I don't want to start watching hours and hours of Combat.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday August 11 2020, @09:47PM
I love those old Gunsmoke and Hee-Haw.
So it's ad fraud if it's streamed, or copyright violation if played offline.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by progo on Tuesday August 11 2020, @02:15PM (3 children)
What the hell is a CTV app?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by epitaxial on Tuesday August 11 2020, @02:17PM
I don't know and the summary is a mess. Sounds like people write throw away apps to push ads and public domain content to smart tvs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @03:29PM
An app for watching CTV [www.ctv.ca], obviously. /s
That and links related to CTV are all that come up when I Google the term. Add "fake" and the results are news stories about fake contact tracing and fake Coronavirus apps.
The description offered by the short TFA,
has zero detail, so is basically useless.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @03:36PM
It looks to me like it's a term that DoubleVerify or someone in their small business circle has coined.
(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?
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(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]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @04:36PM
... but I'm waiting to see what TripleVerify says.