Digital media measurement platform DoubleVerify (DV) has issued guidance to help advertisers to avoid falling victim to ads.txt-related fraud.
The guidance, shared in DV’s Transparency Center, comes in response to the DV Fraud Lab having identified more than 100 cases of ads.txt deception since the standard’s launch in May 2017, noting a “significant increase in recent years.”
“Bad actors are exploiting ads.txt and advertisers often have no idea it’s happening,” said Gilit Saporta, Head of the DV Fraud Lab. “It’s a growing risk that demands more scrutiny from buyers, sellers and vendors.”
An example of the scale of the problem was uncovered by the DV Fraud Lab earlier this year. ‘Synthetic Echo,’ a network of more than 200 AI-generated, ad-supported websites, was found to be churning out low-quality content and using deceptive domain names – such as espn24.co.uk, nbcsportz.com, and cbsnewz.com – to mislead programmatic platforms and buyers.
Within synthetic echo sites, the DV Fraud Lab found near-identical ads.txt files being replicated, showing how fraudsters clone authorised seller lists to scale their schemes.
*DoubleVerify is a client of Bluestripe Communications, owned by Bluestripe Group, publisher of NDA
