IAB Europe considers Traffic Acquisition Manipulation as Ad Fraud

IAB Europe this month introduced Traffic Acquisition Manipulation as a fraud type in the Guide to Ad Fraud. The guide was built with the contribution of Integral Ad Science (IAS), DoubleVerify, Moat (Oracle), GroupM, Pubmatic, Publicis, and Agora.

IAB Europe considers Traffic Acquisition Manipulation when publishers utilize and pay-out fraudulent traffic drivers to increase visitor volume.

IAB Europe says publishers often are unaware that the traffic is non human.

Traffic Acquisition Manipulation can also be called ad arbitrage. An example is a website that is paying 10 euros per 1000 visits and doing 20 euros RPM (Revenue Per Mile). This means the publisher is doing a 50% margin.

According to the guide, IAB Europe doesn’t consider ad arbitrage completely as fraud, but only when publishers are paying for fraudulent traffic drivers.

IAB Europe recommends advertisers to demand full transparency into inventory and traffic, including sourced traffic and audience extension.