Audience networks are being used by criminals to defraud advertisers of tens of billions of dollars every year.

Click fraud prevention service Polygraph is advising advertisers to beware of audience networks if they want to minimize their exposure to click fraud.

According to Trey Vanes, Polygraph’s head of marketing, click fraud is a sophisticated internet crime which steals tens of billions of dollars from advertisers every year.

“Click fraud is the biggest scam most people haven’t heard of,” said Vanes. “Criminals create websites and monetize the content using advertisements. They then use bots, and other forms of trickery, to generate fake clicks on the ads. For each of these fake clicks, the advertisers pay fees to the advertising networks, who then share the money with the scammers.”

The advertising system used by click fraud criminals is known as the audience network, or display network.

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“Audience networks are where the fraud happens,” said Vanes. “Audience networks allow advertisers to place their adverts on third party websites, such as blogs, magazines, forums, and news websites. Unfortunately, a lot of these third party websites are scams, where unscrupulous companies have created websites for the purpose of displaying and clicking on ads.”

“To make matters worse, most advertising networks do little to no click fraud detection, so it’s a free-for-all for the scammers,” added Vanes.

Vanes says Polygraph’s warnings are being ignored by most advertising networks.

“We detect click fraud and help advertisers prevent click fraud, “ said Vanes. “As part of our service, the advertising networks are told which scam websites are defrauding advertisers, and we list the methods the scammers are using to generate fake clicks, such as the specific bot software and click fraud techniques.

“You would think the advertising networks would take action and prevent these websites from displaying ads, but most don’t. As an example, a major advertising network allows scammers to defraud advertisers, and ignores any evidence given to them.”

According to Vanes, advertisers need to take action to protect themselves against click fraud.

“It’s important advertisers know which websites are generating fake clicks on their ads, so they can block click fraud websites from being allowed to display their ads,” said Vanes. “Polygraph gives advertisers everything they need to detect click fraud, prevent click fraud, and apply for refunds from the advertising networks.”

“Polygraph makes it easy to stop click fraud,” added Vanes.

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