AppNexus to start refunding advertisers for fake traffic
AppNexus has become the latest ad tech vendor to start offering advertisers a refund for fraudulent traffic as clients demand greater transparency over their marketing dollars.
Starting from the end of the month, the ad tech company says it will refund buyers using their DSP whose traffic came from bots or fake sources.
However, rather than offering cash refunds, the company will give the buyer credits if they submit a claim within 30 days.
AppNexus’ move follows in the footsteps of Google, which announced similar measures last August and Amobee, which launched the Inventory Accountability Programme in December.
The announcement comes months after Adform claimed it discovered one of the world’s largest bot fraud farms, which allegedly generated nearly two billion fraudulent requests on 34,000 different domains.
In addition to the refund, AppNexus has also said it will start enforcing the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s approved ads.txt, a file that aims to prevent unauthorised inventory sales.
Under the new measure, the vendor claimed it will disable buying through its platform from parties that are “not directly identified through the publisher’s ads.txt files as authorised resellers”.
In a statement AppNexus’ chief operating officer Ryan Christensen said: “Enforcement of ads.txt furthers our efforts to minimise domain spoofing and increase brand safety for our buyers.
“Ads.txt compliance strengthens our core commitment to transparency and providing a safe platform for our buyers to purchase media from authentic sellers.”
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