Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
Bob Mungamuru. "Competition and Fraud in Online Advertising Markets". Talk or presentation, 10, October, 2007.

Abstract
Advertising fraud, particularly click fraud, is a growing concern to the online advertising industry. Unlike many online security threats, ad fraud is primarily motivated by financial gain. Successfully committing ad fraud yields direct monetary gains for attackers at the expense of the victims. Thus, it is natural to consider online ad fraud in an economic context.rnrnThe online advertising market can be modeled as a dynamic game between three classes of players: publishers, advertisers, and ad networks. Publishers produce content that draws traffic and sell advertising space to advertisers. Ad networks act as intermediaries who connect publishers and advertisers. In practice, there are many publishers, many advertisers, and relatively few ad networks. Often a single organization may play two roles in the system, for instance, being both a publisher and advertiser or being both a publisher and ad network.rnrnIn our work, we first pose the ad fraud problem in detail. We then make a sequence of simplifications, leading to a tractable model that isolates the strategic interactions between competing ad networks. In particular, each ad network makes a single decision per period - how "aggressively" to filter for ad fraud. If an ad network filters more aggressively, advertisers realize a higher return on their investment, but the publishers and the ad network incur a higher false positive rate. Conversely, if an ad network filters less aggressively, the publishers and the ad network see a short term gain, but advertisers realize lower returns. The publishers and advertisers are assumed to observe the past history and play their best responses. We characterize the equilibria of this game, study convergence properties, and discuss the effect of reputation.

Electronic downloads

• HTML

  Bob Mungamuru. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/290.html"
  ><i>Competition and Fraud in Online Advertising
  Markets</i></a>, Talk or presentation,  10,
  October, 2007.

• Plain text

  Bob Mungamuru. "Competition and Fraud in Online
  Advertising Markets". Talk or presentation,  10,
  October, 2007.

• BibTeX

  @presentation{Mungamuru07_CompetitionFraudInOnlineAdvertisingMarkets,
      author = {Bob Mungamuru},
      title = {Competition and Fraud in Online Advertising Markets},
      day = {10},
      month = {October},
      year = {2007},
      abstract = {Advertising fraud, particularly click fraud, is a
                growing concern to the online advertising
                industry. Unlike many online security threats, ad
                fraud is primarily motivated by financial gain.
                Successfully committing ad fraud yields direct
                monetary gains for attackers at the expense of the
                victims. Thus, it is natural to consider online ad
                fraud in an economic context.rnrnThe online
                advertising market can be modeled as a dynamic
                game between three classes of players: publishers,
                advertisers, and ad networks. Publishers produce
                content that draws traffic and sell advertising
                space to advertisers. Ad networks act as
                intermediaries who connect publishers and
                advertisers. In practice, there are many
                publishers, many advertisers, and relatively few
                ad networks. Often a single organization may play
                two roles in the system, for instance, being both
                a publisher and advertiser or being both a
                publisher and ad network.rnrnIn our work, we first
                pose the ad fraud problem in detail. We then make
                a sequence of simplifications, leading to a
                tractable model that isolates the strategic
                interactions between competing ad networks. In
                particular, each ad network makes a single
                decision per period - how "aggressively" to filter
                for ad fraud. If an ad network filters more
                aggressively, advertisers realize a higher return
                on their investment, but the publishers and the ad
                network incur a higher false positive rate.
                Conversely, if an ad network filters less
                aggressively, the publishers and the ad network
                see a short term gain, but advertisers realize
                lower returns. The publishers and advertisers are
                assumed to observe the past history and play their
                best responses. We characterize the equilibria of
                this game, study convergence properties, and
                discuss the effect of reputation.},
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/290.html}
  }
  

Posted by Larry Rohrbough on 16 Oct 2007.
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