Fighting a new wave of ad-fraud: how to recognise ghost sites?
So-called ghost sites are part of a new wave of fraudulent websites argues Timothy Whitfield. How do marketers and agencies spot and avoid them?
If I needed money for a new kidney then I would get into ad-fraud! It’s lucrative, easy and completely legal.
There is a new type of ad-fraud on the market. It’s called “ghost sites” and they are the next generation of fraud sites. They are designed to bypass the tech filters from the traditional ad-fraud tech vendors. These fraud sites are clean, crisp and clear and have have no issues with Brand Safety or Viewability. In fact, verification tech vendors usually give these sites a clean bill of health.
Ghost Sites have great viewability metrics as they only have 1 x ad-format and it’s at the top & middle of the page. The ad-format is usually medium to large player size so they aren’t being caught by technologies focused on finding small (300×250) players.
Gotta watch those wordpress sites…
by foul sweep i think you mean fell swoop
but thanks for your piece.
it has become reason #432 why i no longer allocate budget to digital display..
this is a great article for our next pitch.
if a person clicks on a search engine link and views an ad on one of these “ghost” sites (i note not one example URL) then, what’s the problem ?
Tech vendors such as White Ops, DoubleVerify and IAS don’t rely on key words to detect fraud, like they do for brand safety so your assertion that they don’t pick up fraudulent traffic on such sites is just 100% wrong.
Mumbrella, why aren’t you fact checking here ?
If you buy on the open exchanges at rock bottom prices don’t be surprised and don’t moan if don’t get premium quality space…
Buy from a reputable publisher if you want quality inventory….might struggle on the arbitrage piece, but that shouldn’t matter when client needs are paramount.
Spiffy: the issue with ‘ghost’ sites is that their audience is generally purchased, not organic. Let’s say I set up a ghost site whose ads get a $2 CPM, and I can (through grey- or black-market vendors) purchase traffic to that site at a $1 CPM. That means I can spend $1,000 to purchase a million ‘visitors’ to my site (who are quite often malware running on virus-infected computers) who will ‘view’ and ‘click’ my ad, making me back double my original investment.
@Tim Bennett – can I buy you a beer so you can show me how to do that???
Tim,
How is what you describe different from major pubs buying cheap traffic ? They all do it and trade on it.
All major pubs carry click bait powered by outbrain at the end of every page as a commercial model. One could argue a good portion of the destination sites are “ghost” sites as described above.
My point is if a person clicks and views an ad. thats not fraud. Might be rubbish content, but there’s plenty of it and some big players are making a buck from it.
Rubbish content and people viewing it isn’t the problem. Bot’s that collect cookies on clients sites then ramp up impressions on fake sites is the issue which is not really discussed here.
Hey All,
Thanks for all the feedback. Even the critical feedback is welcome as everybody has the right to their own POV. I loved the feedback about by “foul sweep vs fell swoop”. I stand corrected 🙂
There is some very interesting topics being discussed above about the difference between legitimate sites and Ghost Sites. I see a very clear delineation between the two. It’s a bit tricky discussing it in a blog. However, if anybody wants to discuss it with me in more detail then please feel free to contact me directly.
https://au.linkedin.com/in/timothywhitfield
Cheers,
Tim