Yahoo now allows third parties to verify fraud in ad campaigns

Advertisers are concerned about the level of fraudulent traffic in pay-per-click digital ad campaigns. In an attempt to be more transparent with advertisers, Yahoo is introducing a new program that allows them to independently verify how much of their traffic is real.

A report from last year showed that bots account for as many as 11 percent of clicks on display ads and 23 percent of clicks on video ads. Put another way, of the $48.3 billion that will be spent on digital advertising this year, $6.3 billion will pay for fraudulently generated clicks.

Yahoo’s new fraud viewing tool gives advertisers insight into digital display and video campaigns across its sites as well as media bought through its programmatic platform. The company is tapping several third parties, including comScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, and Moat, to independently verify fraud in ad campaigns.

Earlier this year, Facebook, Google, and AOL among others joined the Trustworthy Accountability Group, run by the Internet Advertising Bureau, to eliminate fraud on their networks. Rather than providing transparency into ad fraud, these companies are hoping that advertisers will trust that IAB is working to eradicate the problem.

Yahoo, on the other hand, is allowing advertisers to see how much ad traffic is fraudulent while also working to bring bot-driven clicks down. The company hopes that other major ad platforms will adopt this strategy.