Impression Fraud in On-line Advertising via Pay-Per-View Networks

Advertising is one of the primary means for revenue generation for millions of websites and mobile apps. While the majority of online advertising revenues are based on pay-per-click, alternative forms such as impression-based display and video advertising have been growing rapidly over the past several years. In this paper, we investigate the problem of invalid traffic generation that aims to inflate advertising impressions on websites. Our study begins with an analysis of purchased traffic for a set of honeypot websites. Data collected from these sites provides a window into the basic mechanisms used for impression fraud and in particular enables us to identify pay-per-view (PPV) networks. PPV networks are comprised of legitimate websites that use JavaScript provided by PPV network service providers to render unwanted web pages "underneath" requested content on a real user’s browser so that additional advertising impressions are registered. We describe the characteristics of the PPV network ecosystem and the typical methods for delivering fraudulent impressions. We also provide a case study of scope of PPV networks in the Internet. Our results show that these networks deliver hundreds of millions of fraudulent impressions per day, resulting in hundreds of millions of lost advertising dollars annually. Characteristics unique to traffic delivered via PPV networks are also discussed. We conclude with recommendations for countermeasures that can reduce the scope and impact of PPV networks.