The fallout of ad fraud continues for Newsweek Media Group as ad tech vendors are saying that they have stopped selling NMG inventory through their exchanges and networks.
Last week, SpotX and AppNexus told The Wall Street Journal that they have ended their relationships to sell ads on NMG properties.
According to DoubleVerify, a third-party measurement and authentication company, it had identified fraudulent code running on five NMG domains. This code would block third-party measurement firms from determining if an ad was viewable during a browsing session. It was explained by DoubleVerify that it manipulated browser characters to make it look as if the site is delivering authentic and viewable ad impressions, thus inflating the number of billable impressions.
“We have seen this technique used in the past by bots and malware in an attempt to deceive measurement methodologies used by DoubleVerify,” said Wayne Gattinella, president and CEO. “This is the first time we’ve seen this scheme scaled at the publisher level.”