With a recent study by Integral Ad Science, claiming bot traffic cost advertisers as much as £277m a year in the UK alone, with 12.2 per cent of all ad impressions there found to be fraudulent between April and June. Advertisers are looking to establish a common definition as to what constitutes ad fraud.

TheDrum.com reported:

Efforts are being led by blue-chip brands including Nationwide, Procter & Gamble and Unilever, which aim to grapple with the thorny issue collectively through a specialist ISBA working group that is currently in the process of devising a commonly held definition of what actually constitutes ad fraud – as opposed to poor practice. Nationwide, Procter & Gamble and Unilever all declined to comment on the cross-industry group.

The brands then intend to work with JICWEBs – a cross-industry trade body that also constitutes the IAB and IPA – to go about recommending ad tech companies through an accreditation system involving their preferred verification partner ABC.

This process, which industry insiders describe as a huge technical undertaking, is set to include the verification initiative working with the trade bodies to build software that can ape the behavior of fraudulent traffic – which is commonly referred to as “bots” within the industry – in order to verify anti-fraud vendors’ claims.

Read the full article on TheDrum.com