I recently read an article that predicts global ad tech revenue will rise from a forecasted humble $30 billion for 2015, to $100 billion in 2020. If ad tech were a country, it would have a larger economy than 120 countries. That is a great deal of money.
That is so much money, in fact, that I believe there is NO WAY the practitioners of ad fraud are going to walk away from the market.
Ad fraud is a big issue for ad tech, with estimates that from 3-50% of inventory is fraudulent (dependent upon the network & exchange); and vendors are working furiously on detecting and blocking inventory that comes from bots or hidden ads or ad stacking or cookie stuffing, etc. But after spending years in the security industry, I learned two key things: 1. Criminals always follow the money and 2. It is an endless arms race. The tactics may change, as do some of the actors, but the end goal does not – it is greed, pure and simple. This is the same greed that drives phishers, hackers, botnet herders, and other black hats. There is a convergence between the two industries – we will be saying a lot more about this later in an upcoming white paper.
