New Tool Helps Boost Campaign Performance and ROI for Ad Networks
AUSTIN, Texas – Click Forensics®, Inc., the industry leader in scoring, auditing and improving traffic quality for the online advertising community, expanded its Click Forensics traffic quality management platform with a new “Block List” feature. The feature provides ad networks with the immediate benefits of a continually updated list of visitor IP addresses and publishers known to generate online advertising fraud or invalid traffic, including sources of publisher “collusion fraud.” The tool can be used in concert with the real-time Click Forensics platform to block bad traffic sources and to shift online advertising dollars toward sources that deliver better results.
The Block List protection feature is in part made possible by the built-in publisher collusion detection capabilities of the Click Forensics platform. Collusion fraud schemes occur when online publishers use rotating IP-addresses or botnets to click ads on their own sites in order to generate inflated commissions from unprotected ad networks. Collusion fraud is difficult to differentiate from valid clicks. However, by using advanced data mining techniques, such as high-dimensional cluster analysis, the Click Forensics platform is able to pinpoint and report on both the offending publishers and clicking IP-addresses, which are then added to the Block List. The Block List is updated daily and made available to clients as data and insight is collected from the Click Forensics network.
“Our new Block List is a quick first step for ad networks looking for information on some of the best and worst online traffic sources,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics. “They can use it to help their clients make the most of their online advertising investments.”
As a feature of the Click Forensics traffic quality management platform, the Block List includes traffic sources that Click Forensics has identified and tracked over the years for the world’s top ad networks, advertisers and online publishers. Examples of blocked traffic sources include:
Publishers committing click fraud;
IP addresses of visitors known to commit a high level of fraud;
IP address ranges generating non-human traffic, such as co-location facilities; and
Other traffic sources that generate hacker attacks and spam.
“The Click Forensics Block List feature is an invaluable tool to help us protect our advertisers and deliver better results,” said Evan Balafas, Managing Director of Excite Digital Media, a leading search advertising network. “Just as we proactively protect our own computers from viruses and malware threats, we need to continually do the same for our advertisers so they get the most out of the millions of dollars they spend online.”
The Click Forensics traffic quality management platform monitors online media traffic across over 300 ad networks as well as billions of clicks from top search engines, leading publishers and advertiser web sites – providing the most complete and holistic view of search and online advertising traffic quality. Combining more than three years of industry online advertising data and patent-pending heuristics to measure and score traffic quality in real-time, the best and worst traffic sources are flagged by Click Forensics solutions so advertisers, publishers and ad networks can select only the kind of traffic they want in order to improve the overall performance of online campaigns.
For more information on Click Forensics and its offerings, visit www.clickforensics.com.
About Click Forensics, Inc.
Click Forensics is the industry leader in scoring, auditing and improving traffic quality for the online advertising community. Click Forensics provides traffic quality management solutions for leading online advertisers, publishers and ad networks, including companies such as Yahoo!, eBay, Progressive Insurance, Experian, Nextag, Infospace, Turn, Traffic Engine, Vegas.com and many others. The company also publishes the Click Fraud Index®, the top independent source of industry click fraud data. Click Forensics is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is privately held with funding from Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Stanford University. More information on Click Forensics and its offerings is available at www.ClickForensics.com.
Click Forensics and Click Fraud Index are registered trademarks of Click Forensics, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
