Google has bought London-based start-up Spider.io as part of its initiative to
stamp out fraud in online advertising.
The deal reinforces Google’s commitment to fighting online fraud as scammers
seek to take advantage of the $16bn online advert market.
One of the most common terms is click fraud, where criminals use automated
programmes and bots to artificially boost the number of clicks on an online
ad to boost revenues.
Online advertising fraud is estimated to cost internet companies up to $10bn
annually, and Google plans to use Spider.io’s fraud protection technology in
its display and video ad products.
The online search giant said in a statement that the start-up’s expertise
would help them to “improve the entire digital ecosystem” and improve
metrics to determine the value of digital media to advertisers. Continue.
Spider.io, which was founded three years ago, has exposed several high profile
scams within the past year and posted detailed accounts of the activities on
its website. Among these was the identification of the infamous Chameleon
bot, which is estimated to have generated more than 9m false advert
impressions each month across more than 200 websites.
In a blog post from November last year, Spider.io described how display and video advertisers are inadvertently funding the criminals who develop increasingly sophisticated botnet malware, writing: “The more advertisers fund these criminals, the more difficult it becomes to prevent online advertising fraud”.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it is believed the start-up’s seven employees will join the Google office.
Douglas de Jager, Spider.io's chief executive, has been spoken at Google and Microsoft in the past, and has published papers on performance analysis, web information retrieval and asynchronous algorithms.
Google recently invested in Active View, a tool to enable advertisers to only buy the adverts that are viewable on a page, ensuring brand marketers' adverts had a chance to be seen.
In a blog post from November last year, Spider.io described how display and video advertisers are inadvertently funding the criminals who develop increasingly sophisticated botnet malware, writing: “The more advertisers fund these criminals, the more difficult it becomes to prevent online advertising fraud”.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it is believed the start-up’s seven employees will join the Google office.
Douglas de Jager, Spider.io's chief executive, has been spoken at Google and Microsoft in the past, and has published papers on performance analysis, web information retrieval and asynchronous algorithms.
Google recently invested in Active View, a tool to enable advertisers to only buy the adverts that are viewable on a page, ensuring brand marketers' adverts had a chance to be seen.
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