The Inventory is Dark and Full of Misinformation: Understanding the Abuse of Ad Inventory Pooling in the Ad-Tech Supply Chain

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2210.06654v3
• Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2023 05:53:02 GMT
• Title: The Inventory is Dark and Full of Misinformation: Understanding the Abuse of Ad Inventory Pooling in the Ad-Tech Supply Chain
• Authors: Yash Vekaria (1), Rishab Nithyanand (2), Zubair Shafiq (1) ((1) University of California, Davis, (2) University of Iowa)
• Abstract summary: Ad-tech enables publishers to sell their ad inventory to millions of demand partners through a complex supply chain. We investigate for the first time how ad-tech sites subvert transparency standards and pool their ad inventory with unrelated sites to circumvent brand safety protections.
• Score: 1.0573120858963332
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Ad-tech enables publishers to programmatically sell their ad inventory to millions of demand partners through a complex supply chain. Bogus or low quality publishers can exploit the opaque nature of the ad-tech to deceptively monetize their ad inventory. In this paper, we investigate for the first time how misinformation sites subvert the ad-tech transparency standards and pool their ad inventory with unrelated sites to circumvent brand safety protections. We find that a few major ad exchanges are disproportionately responsible for the dark pools that are exploited by misinformation websites. We further find evidence that dark pooling allows misinformation sites to deceptively sell their ad inventory to reputable brands. We conclude with a discussion of potential countermeasures such as better vetting of ad exchange partners, adoption of new ad-tech transparency standards that enable end-to-end validation of the ad-tech supply chain, as well as widespread deployment of independent audits like ours.

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