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BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

3. An industry divided - and an industry We’ve already seen hints of this in 2018 - for example,
united? the FBI was heavily involved in bringing 3ve down.
Meanwhile, governments across Europe continue to
The advertising industry kicked off 2018 with mobile ad debate imposing taxes on digital media companies -
agency Fetch countersuing ‘faithless business partner’ with France ploughing ahead to introduce measures on
Uber for $20 million in unpaid invoices - Uber had 1 January. It seems to be only a matter of time before
previously sought $40 million in damages after accusing the regulators step in.
Fetch of billing the firm for fake clicks. It’s safe to say
that the relationship between brands, agencies and 5. Fraud tech versus ad tech - the fight to stay
networks is often strained - and as marketers ahead
increasingly scrutinize their partners and take
operations in-house, it’s clear that the agency model will The fraudsters are getting savvier and are even turning
need to change if they want to rebuild bridges. our own technology against us - for example, by using
Transparency will be essential. Android test automation software to create botnets, like
a Trojan horse. With each new era of technology, we
That said, no one party can single-handedly tackle the must think one step further - and for fraud mitigation,
challenges the digital advertising industry currently that next step is machine learning. Fraud is constantly
faces and 2019 will see increasing calls for mutating and evolving to avoid detection - therefore,
unprecedented industry collaboration, and perhaps the only way we can prevent instead of reacting to
even some unexpected partnerships in the war against incidents is to be able to recognize when change is
fraud. afoot. Machine learning will be increasingly relied upon
to comb through data and identify these unknowns
4. Call in the cavalry before it’s too late. ◊

Until now, fraudsters have had the ideal environment to
thrive - beyond the lack of industry transparency, By Luke Taylor,
there’s been little in the way of criminal investigations to Chief Operations Officer and Founder
bring them to justice, and even less in terms of of TrafficGuard
repercussions for their actions. But as public outcry
increases around topics such as the rise of ‘fake news’
and digital scams, the groundwork has been laid for
politicians to enter the stage.

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