A recent report from White Ops estimates that a Russian bot operation — dubbed Methbot because of references to ‘meth’ in its code — is netting up to $5 million per day for its owners in fraudulent online advertising. Considering that this is just one, albeit huge, operation, and that White Ops readily acknowledges that the operation could be netting far more dollars, it’s easy to work the math and arrive at the conclusion that online ad fraud is a multi-billion dollar global ad industry.

What’s more, this particular operation doesn’t have the telltale characteristics that digital veterans typically associate with ad fraud — low end properties tricking users into clicking but quickly leaving. Rather, it is characterized by “falsified websites designed to look like premium publisher inventory”. (Indeed, the report cites specific examples from The Economist, Fox, and International Business Times, among others.)

[…READ MORE AT: Original Article: digitalcontentnext.org]