The Devil is in the Details: Analyzing the Lucrative Ad Fraud Patterns
of the Online Ad Ecosystem
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08418v1
- Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2023 10:28:07 GMT
- Title: The Devil is in the Details: Analyzing the Lucrative Ad Fraud Patterns
of the Online Ad Ecosystem
- Authors: Emmanouil Papadogiannakis, Nicolas Kourtellis, Panagiotis
Papadopoulos, Evangelos P. Markatos
- Abstract summary: We study over 7 million websites and examine how state-of-the-art standards associated with online advertising are applied.
We discover and present actual practices observed in the wild and show that publishers are able to monetize objectionable and illegal content.
- Score: 3.936965297430477
- License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Abstract: The online advertising market has recently reached the 500 billion dollar
mark, and to accommodate the need to match a user with the highest bidder at a
fraction of a second, it has moved towards a complex automated model involving
numerous agents and middle men. Stimulated by potential revenue and the lack of
transparency, bad actors have found ways to abuse it, circumvent restrictions,
and generate substantial revenue from objectionable and even illegal content.
To make matters worse, they often receive advertisements from respectable
companies which have nothing to do with these illegal activities. Altogether,
advertiser money is funneled towards unknown entities, supporting their
objectionable operations and maintaining their existence.
In this project, we work towards understanding the extent of the problem and
shed light on how shady agents take advantage of gaps in the ad ecosystem to
monetize their operations. We study over 7 million websites and examine how
state-of-the-art standards associated with online advertising are applied. We
discover and present actual practices observed in the wild and show that
publishers are able to monetize objectionable and illegal content and generate
thousands of dollars of revenue on a monthly basis.
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