Behind the MRC’s new anti-fraud rules

There’s been a huge boom in digital advertising in recent years, with online poised to overtake television as the No. 1 ad medium in the United States as soon as next year. But internet advertising has two major things going against it: ad fraud and ad blockers. While the threat of the latter is debatable, the threat of ad fraud is very real. A recent report found that ad fraud costs $18.5 billion per year, or roughly a third of all online revenues. The fraud is caused by bots, computer-generated devices that click on digital ads. The ads are never seen by human eyes but advertisers must pay for them nonetheless. This week the Media Rating Council released new ad fraud guidelines designed to help clean up this growing problem. The new rules, which can be found here, are designed to help detect and root out fraudulent traffic. The finalized rules have been updated since this summer, when the MRC received comments on a draft of the guidelines from major online advertising groups. David Gunzerath, senior vice president and associate director of the Media Rating Council, talks to Media Life about how the rules evolved, what they’re designed to do, and why they’ll be revisited frequently.

How long have you been working on the ad fraud rules? 

We officially launched this project in August 2014 and concluded it with the issuance of the final document on October 27, 2015.

While this might seem to some people like a long time, it’s actually fairly short for a project of this magnitude.  In large part, that’s because everyone involved—we had a working group consisting of about 200 organizations—recognized the urgency in getting this completed.
 

We hear a lot of hype over ad fraud, but it’s hard to get a grasp on just how big a problem it is. What’s your sense? 

I agree it’s hard to get a clear sense of the real scale of it.

I think it’s fairly clear that different environments represent different levels of risk, and those that are more closely stewarded by the parties involved in the transactions are probably much less likely to be vulnerable to high levels of fraudulent traffic.

One of the key things to keep in mind about these guidelines is that they offer a framework for independent evaluation and accreditation of the methods of those services operating in the fraud detection space.

Once the industry can better understand and have full confidence in the work being done in this area—which generates the findings that are the source of much of the discussion around the levels of ad fraud that exist in the ecosystem—I think we’ll have a much better sense of the true baselines of ad fraud that exist.

What changed between your original guidelines and these final ones? 

Most of the changes that were made between the public comment version that was issued this summer and the final version issued this week concerned the addition of clarifications and details on implementation logistics.

These were generally in response to comments we received that noted a need for additional clarity or guidance in certain sections of the document.

Also, in response to comments we received from a very broad cross-section of organizations, we extended the period for currently accredited measurers to present us with a plan to comply with the new IVT Guidelines from the originally proposed timetable of 14 days from the date of the guidelines’ issuance to 30 days after its issuance.

We thought this was reasonable. The timeline for required compliance with the Guidelines remained the same, however—180 days from the guidelines’ date of issuance.
Who exactly do these guidelines govern? 

These guidelines will apply to all digital measurers who are or wish to be accredited or certified against MRC’s Standards or IAB or IAB/MMA measurement guidelines.

Also, it’s important to note that some provisions of the guidelines assign these measurers certain responsibilities concerning the behaviors of their business partners; it’s impossible to address the issue of invalid traffic in the digital supply chain without doing that.

So in that sense the impact of the guidelines is likely to extend beyond those accredited/certified organizations.

What will be the biggest challenge, do you think, in implementing them?

I think the biggest challenge for implementation is that the guidelines do require a significantly enhanced organizational effort for detecting and filtering invalid traffic than did previous requirements.

While some organizations likely are already compliant with these revised requirements in most respects, due to work they’ve done over an extended time to enhance their own processes, some others may need to make some significant changes over a relatively short time frame (organizations must be fully compliant with the guidelines within six months).

And while everyone’s known these changes were coming at them for some time now, that six-month clock officially started ticking on October 27, the day we released the final version of the guidelines. So in some cases, there may be quite a bit of work to do in a relatively compressed period of time.
What were the biggest challenges you came across in drafting these new rules? 

I think a key concern on everyone’s mind when we were drafting these in collaboration with the working group that was formed for this project was the prospect of achieving a reasonable balance between what are, in essence, two competing forces:  allowing for the level of transparency and information sharing necessary to enable effective detection and prevention of invalid activity, and doing so in a way that wouldn’t be self-defeating, in that it would provide a roadmap for bad guys to follow to get around these detection and prevention methods.

I think that was a constant tension in our discussions, and hopefully we’ve done a pretty good job in achieving an appropriate balance in that regard.
How do you think they will impact online traffic? 

We’re optimistic the application of these guidelines to digital measurements will raise the bar significantly in the industry’s battle against invalid traffic and will, along with other industry initiatives that are currently unfolding as we speak, provide those who invest in digital advertising with a high degree of confidence those investments are being well protected.

It’s also important to note that we’ll be revisiting these guidelines regularly going forward to consider changes and additions.

The digital advertising landscape evolves rapidly, and it’s important that these guidelines address the challenges that exist in the environment, both today and in the future.
What sort of reaction have you heard so far to the new rules? 

The reaction we’ve received to date has been overwhelmingly positive. The topic of fraud has been a front-burner issue in digital for some time now, and I think all parties interested in the well-being of the industry welcome all efforts to counteract the inclusion of invalid traffic in measured counts, particularly one that has the potential to have such a positive impact as we believe these guidelines do.
Will you revisit these guidelines in the future?

Absolutely.

As I noted earlier, we’ve established a mechanism to re-evaluate and consider revisions to the guidelines on a regular periodic basis moving forward.

One of our primary goals for this project was to create guidelines that can effectively address the challenges that exist in the current environment, and that will be just as true a year from now as it is today. If we need to revise the guidelines to achieve that, we won’t hesitate to do so.

Tags: anti-fraud, digital fraud, fraud, MRC, mrc fraud guidelines, mrc fraud rules, online advertising