The Media Ratings Council (MRC) announced today that White Ops, the digital advertising security company, is now the only digital monitoring company to have been accredited for sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) detection.
What is SIVT? Let’s back up a second. Within digital marketing, there comes the risk that not all of the traffic to your site (or clicks on your ads) is human. An ever-growing percentage of it is fraudulent activity – invalid “bot” traffic that is designed to mirror human actions to drive up traffic and generate millions of dollars for the mastermind criminals behind this.
Detecting general bot traffic isn’t anything new; there are many companies who currently work on behalf of clients to separate these fraudulent metrics from those that are real. However, the majority of fraud that’s previously been detected is general invalid traffic (GIVT), i.e., easy-to-detect bots from suspect sites that are widely shared within the industry. SIVT, on the other hand, is much more difficult to detect and “requires using constantly-updated advanced analytics and significant human intervention to catch previously undetected hijacked devices and tactics.” Companies who receive this accreditation will have to provide their clients with a separate SIVT report, in addition to a GIVT report.
White Ops (and any other fraud-detection companies that receive the accreditation hereafter) will now be able to identify and prevent the SIVT that’s potentially (and most likely) hurting your business.
At ami+partners, we strongly encourage any advertiser entering the digital space to protect themselves by hiring a 3rd party monitoring system. One that is able to detect SIVT is even better. According to a report from the ANA that was conducted by White Ops, $7.2 billion is expected to be lost to ad fraud in 2016. That’s your hard-earned money; don’t make it any easier for them to take it.