“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. The words we use matter. Last month, for example, the Media Rating Council recategorized the term “over-the-top” as “connected TV,” which is what most people in the industry mean when they refer to streaming. The distinction is important, because it helps buyers […]
Ad measurement and verification company Method Media Intelligence uncovered a connected TV fraud scheme that it says rakes in $10 million a month in ad revenue. The scheme, dubbed “RapidFire,” feeds counterfeit bid requests into ad exchanges running open auctions for CTV inventory. Like many multimillion video fraud scams, RapidFire targets server-side ad insertion (SSAI) […]
Ad fraud in connected TV saw a 12% drop this year to .4%, a sign that ad buyers have been proactive following a number of high-profile schemes over the past several years that bilked them out of millions. A new report by ad verification provider DoubleVerify looked at post-bid data and more than a trillion […]
Following this month’s conviction of Aleksandr Zhukov – the ringleader of an ad fraud scam called Methbot that bilked digital advertisers out of more than $7 million five years ago – industry leaders said that such scams are becoming more frequent in connected TV (CTV) and are often tied to larger cybercrime operations. Leaders from […]
The architect of Methbot was found guilty in a New York court last week. The verdict came nearly five years after the ad fraud scheme was first publicized back in December 2016. We dive into the most intriguing details of the case – from the likely political motivations behind the prosecution to the sophistication of […]
Five years after a Russian ad fraud scheme that bilked digital advertisers out of more than $7 million was uncovered, self-proclaimed “King of Fraud” Aleksandr Zhukov was convicted last week by a federal jury in Brooklyn. Zhukov, 41, was arrested in Bulgaria in 2018 and extradited to the United States in 2019 for running a […]
Until now, if an ad fraud scam was uncovered, the criminals behind it would usually fade back into the shadows with impunity, and shortly thereafter, they’d be back at it again – the seemingly eternal game of Whac-A-Mole. This time, there’s accountability. Two global botnets, Methbot and 3ve, are no more, and there are real people […]
On Tuesday, White Ops exposed a sophisticated browser-based botnet called Methbot that was reportedly stealing somewhere between $3 million and $5 million of US-based video ad spend a day. The story developed quickly after that. Some large, well-known exchanges have come out to say they’ve had little or no exposure to Methbot. And a few […]
Meet Methbot, the Russian hacking operation that’s costing advertisers between $3 million and $5 million a day. At the very least, that’s a little over $1 billion a year – a hefty chunk of the ad industry’s estimated $7.2 billion annual ad fraud problem. White Ops first uncovered the browser-based botnet in September 2015, when it […]
