“ Data-Driven Thinking ” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Today’s column is written by Michael Greene, vice president of product strategy at AudienceScience .

The recent report from online ad fraud-detection vendor WhiteOps about the millions of dollars lost to the Methbot fraud operation was the holiday gift that keeps on giving. Many brands, agencies and tech vendors spent their holiday breaks in a sweat, hoping that they weren’t affected by the Russian fraud ring.

But while Methbot’s gains – to the estimated daily tune of $3 million to $5 million in advertisers’ lost budget – are certainly noteworthy, they’re simply the latest chapter in a long fraud story that the ad industry continues to write year after year.

The truth is that as long as the industry continues to buy into fraud-fighting myths, stories like this will continue to break. The only way to prevent the next Methbot is for all of the players – buyers, publishers and tech vendors – to completely rewrite the rules on how we approach fraud detection and avoidance. Doing that starts with debunking some of the biggest myths about fraud.

[…READ MORE at:Original Article: adexchanger.com]