THE TRUSTWORTHY ACCOUNTABILITY GROUP (TAG) has announced an initiative to block illegitimate and non-human ad traffic from data centres. Or to put it another way, taking the fight against bad 'bots' up a gear.
TAG will use Google's database of data centre IP addresses as the basis for a wider list from the likes of Dstillery, Facebook, MediaMath, Quantcast, the Rubicon Project, the Trade Desk, TubeMogul and Yahoo.
Data centres that originate such botnet behaviour will be blacklisted in a bid to nip the problem in the bud at source.
"Industry leaders like Google are stepping up to the plate to provide the information and tools we need to block fraudulent and illegitimate ad traffic at its source," said TAG CEO Mike Zaneis.
“This programme is another piece of the interlocking set of solutions TAG is building to fight fraud across the entire ecosystem. The industry is galvanising its efforts and we will win the war against fraud.”
Bots have their place. They're used to find you the deal you want on that flight, or measure the analytics of your website. But they can also be turned into fraudulent visitors to websites - the type that has made services like Captcha part of our everyday lives.
"Tackling ad fraud will require everyone in the industry to take an active role," said Neal Mohan, vice president for video and display advertising products at Google.
"We'e excited by the collaborative spirit we’ve seen during the launch of this initiative and look forward to working with everyone in the ecosystem to remove fraud from advertising."
The pilot programme will release a set of principles for public comment, before the final programme incorporating those comments is made available in the form of an anti-fraud tool at the end of 2015. µ