March 2017 / Page 1marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Example of publishers taking action to reduce bots

Publisher 1 – stopped buying traffic

Publisher 2 – filtered data center traffic

March 2017 / Page 2marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Publishers filtering bots – on-site vs in-ad

On-Site measurement, bots are still coming

In-Ad measurement, bots and data centers filtered

10% red

-7% (filter)

3% red

March 2017 / Page 3marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Dr. Augustine Fou – Independent Ad Fraud Researcher2013

2014

Follow me on LinkedIn (click) and on Twitter @acfou (click)

Further reading:http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/presentationshttps://www.linkedin.com/today/author/augustinefou

2016

2015

March 2017 / Page 4marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Harvard Business ReviewExcerpt:

Hunting the Bots

Fou, a prodigy who earned a Ph.D. from MIT at 23, belongs to the generation that witnessed the rise of digital marketers, having crafted his trade at American Express, one of the most successful American consumer brands, and at Omnicom, one of the largest global advertising agencies. Eventually stepping away from corporate life, Fou started his own practice, focusing on digital marketing fraud investigation.

Fou’s experiment proved that fake traffic is unproductive traffic. The fake visitors inflated the traffic statistics but contributed nothing to conversions, which stayed steady even after the traffic plummeted (bottom chart). Fake traffic is generated by “bad-guy bots.” A bot is computer code that runs automated tasks.