Click Forensics Acquires Adometry; Adopts New Company Name

Now Adometry, Company Continues Expansion Into Online Display Ad Verification and Attribution

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Click Forensics®, Inc. today announced that it has acquired display ad verification technology provider Adometry of Redmond, Washington. In addition, Click Forensics announced it has changed its company name to Adometry. The moves are designed to support the continued expansion of the Click Forensics product line for the display advertising market.

In February 2010, Click Forensics launched a beta version of its cross-channel ad analytics suite for online display advertisers, which was tested by some of the world’s top brands and ad inventory providers. The integrated offering is designed to help advertisers, agencies, ad networks and publishers to manage audience verification attribution and campaign optimization through a single platform.

“The key challenge online marketers face today is accurately measuring and improving the performance of their online ad campaigns as they flow across a changing landscape of ad networks and web sites,” said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics and the new Adometry. “With the addition of ad verification technology from Adometry, our ad analytics suite integrates all the pieces of display campaign measurement and optimization in a single offering for brand advertisers.”

Over the past year, Click Forensics has continued to build out its technology offerings for display advertisers. The solution suite, which helps brands measure and improve the performance of their online display campaigns, complements Click Forensics ad analytics technology for PPC marketers. Online marketers can also use the two offerings together to manage their hybrid display and PPC campaigns.

“We’re excited to join forces with the Click Forensics team,” said John Dietz, founder of Adometry. “The company works with the world’s top online advertisers, publishers and ad networks. Our technology will enhance the current capabilities Click Forensics provides to display advertisers as we work together to build out new features for its powerful ad analytics suite.”

For more information, visit www.adometry.com or follow us on Twitter: @Adometry.

About Adometry, Inc.

Adometry, formerly Click Forensics, Inc., provides scoring, auditing, verification, and attribution metrics to optimize results for online advertisers, agencies, publishers, and ad networks. Tracking billions of impressions in real-time, reporting on where they appeared, for how long, and to what effect; the Adometry mission is to bring greater levels of transparency and accountability to the online advertising industry. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Adometry is privately held and backed by Sierra Ventures, Austin Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Stanford University. For more information visit www.adometry.com.

 

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The online advertising world continues to be challenged by ne'er-do-wells as Click Forensics released results from its latest quarterly, deep-dive into the company's fraud detection data. The Company identified challenges with display advertising where "a pop-up or pop-under (...) rotates brand advertisers' banner ads every 10-15 min in an effort to seemingly boost impression figures." Read the release.

CEO Paul Pellman discussed the latest on malware and malvertising.

AdExchanger.com: How is the malware scheme you describe reaching websites - through display ads from exchanges, specific ad networks? Any ideas on how it can be prevented?

PP: The Click Forensics Malware Lab has been finding two generic types of malware.  The first, more common version, is actually installed on the visitor's machine as a result of some other seemingly innocent download.  It can be spread via e-mail attachments or through lots of "freeware" that people install on their machines.  Once installed, these Botnets can take control of browser functions or simply open pop-unders to display ads for nefarious ad networks.  The best way to prevent these is for visitors to be diligent and use updated antivirus software from Symantec, McAfee, and others.

The second type is not really malware at all, but is the one more commonly talked about in AdExchanger circles.  Namely, visitors to ad supported sites get served all sorts of ads that they never see, whether in pop-unders, zero-by-zero iFrames, or invisible pages.  The generic term for these schemes is "ad stuffing."  Advertisers can protect themselves from both types of fraud by employing ad verification and/or audience verification platforms.

What IS the malware? Any trends there?

Much of the malware we found recently came from different types of toolbars.  These are browser plug-ins that purport to assist with search or provide some other value for the visitor (weather, sports scores, etc.), but in reality are also hijacking browser activity for the benefit of the author.  One toolbar we found turned organic search results into paid clicks by routing searches to a parked domain site and channelling clicks through several ad networks.  It's very difficult to trace which are complicit in the fraud and which are innocent participants.

From a marketer's perspective, would using frequency caps or buying on a CPC basis might lessen the impact of inflation impression?

Frequency caps might help a display advertiser minimize the impact of these schemes, but it can't defeat them completely.  As far as converting everything to CPC, it might work in the very short term but, as we well know, click fraud becomes an issue.  The best protection is the diligent monitoring of campaigns and the use of an audience/ad verification platform.

I didn't see you mention malvertising versus malware in your release. Do you distinguish between the two?

We use "malvertising" to refer to ads that send visitors to a place that is bad for them.  The ad itself may not be infected, but its intention is to trick the visitor into doing something damaging.  For example, the ad on NewYorkTimes.com a little over a year ago warned visitors to click through to a site where they could "update their virus protection."  Of course the download included all sorts of malware, but the ad itself was more accurately described as malvertising.

By John Ebbert

 

In April of 2005 I sat at my usual corner table at Krispy Kreme donuts in San Antonio.  

It had become my “thinking place” and every few weeks I would ponder life over a couple of donuts and a cup of coffee. I was reading a series of articles on the growing problem of “click fraud”.  Our former parent company, Optimal iQ, had recently found a group of fake clicks and we were intrigued by the problem.  Perhaps it was the highly caffeinated sugar rush but at that moment, I had an epiphany.  I realized the problem of click fraud was only going to get worse and more complex.  Measure this challenge against the rapid growth of search marketing and there was an opportunity staring me in the face. Click Forensics was born in January of 2006 through the hard work of my co-founders and our dedicated team. We raised over $15,000,000 to solve a problem, execute a plan and lead the industry.  Today Click Forensics is the clear leader in traffic quality management. Our original vision was to “help ensure advertisers get what they pay for” and today that is exactly what we do.  I’m very proud of Click Forensics and excited about the opportunity to continue to serve and improve the online advertising community. In June of last year I made the decision to begin my exit from the company.  Click Forensics is growing rapidly and developing cutting edge technology our competitors can’t touch.  My role has deliberately been changing over the last year and I feel I owed it to myself and my family to explore “what’s next” for me.  So last week, I formally stepped back to a board of director position.  I will continue to help the company in any way I can and remain an active advisor, board member and chairman of the Click Quality Council. As I reflect on the last four years or so of our growth, there are eight things that come to mind that I am most proud of:

1. We raised awareness about click fraud – Sure we may have ruffled a few feathers when we
   
   launched our Click Fraud Index ™ in the spring of 2006, but those numbers caused everyone to stand up and listen.  Google called us out in August of that year and dismissed the problem of click fraud as insignificant, claiming their own efforts to stop it were "reasonable".  The problem was hugely significant and no standards existed to stop it.  Something had to be done so we took the lead.  With the support of the advertising community, we “encouraged” Google to take the problem seriously and listen.
2. We brought “both sides to the table – No one wanted to talk about the problem of click fraud in 2006.  We recognized that solving this problem was in the interest of everyone in the advertising ecosystem.  We worked hard to listen to advertisers and work with search engines to develop sustaining solutions that are communally beneficial.
3. We built a bridge – In a groundbreaking partnership with Yahoo!, we built the FACTr™ system (Fully Automated Click Tracking and Reconciliation).  
   
   FACTr allows advertisers to communicate directly to the ad providers via Click Forensics.  Yahoo! led the way and by the fall of 2007, Looksmart, Google and others followed suit.
4. We saved advertisers money – Our tools and insight are effective in identifying unwanted traffic and allow an advertiser to work with the ad provider to get what they pay for.  Hundreds of customers have used our technology to find click fraud and improve their campaign ROI.
5. We led the charge for standards – Working closely with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
   
   and dozens of online advertising companies we developed standards that were released in June of last year.  It was a team effort from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Click Forensics and many others.  The result is a document that can be built upon for years to come.
6. We worked with some of the best – Our customer list includes industry-leading advertisers like Vegas.com, Progressive Insurance, Experian and EBay.  On the ad network side our clients include leaders like Adknowledge, Turn, Yahoo! and Lycos.  The relationships I have made through customers, partner companies and industry leaders means a lot to me (even Shuman!).  The online advertising industry is vibrant and growing.  Some of the brightest people I have ever been associated make this industry great.
7. We caught click fraud – We have an incredible team of scientists, engineers and developers. Many of them have PhD’s and tremendous industry experience.  We have put their knowledge to work by innovating ahead of the fast moving bad guys.  One example of this is our identification of the “Bahama Botnet”, an organized group of fraudsters using a highly sophisticated approach.  Our discovery of this (subsequently alerting Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google) saved advertisers from paying for these clicks.  Additionally, it forced the bad guys to change their approach.
8. We changed online advertising… for good – The work that we have done and continue to
   
   do is meant to have a sustaining effect on online advertising.  Improving traffic quality in real time means that publishers and ad networks can send out highly qualified clicks to advertisers and enhance trust.  This relationship, built on standards and delivered on quality, will accelerate the growth of online advertising for years to come.  We are proud to play an important part in the ecosystem.

I have enjoyed the opportunity afforded me to play a role in our company and the industry.  I'm deeply appreciative of the support, encouragement and hard work from our employees, partners and board of directors.  It's been an amazing five year ride! And so now I look ahead.  Currently, I’m enjoying an “entrepreneurial sabbatical” to consider options and explore opportunities over the next few months.  I’m enjoying time with friends and family, traveling and learning about new businesses.  I’m keeping busy by consulting with an advertising technology company, joined the advisory board of an NBA agent firm and of course reading, writing and learning.  At some point, I’ll head back to Krispy Kreme.  There are an unlimited supply of donuts, coffee and problems to solve.  I can’t wait~ Tom Cuthbert

Andy Greensberg of Forbes has written about the problem of click fraud for years.  In fact it was Forbes who published a "debate" between Shuman Ghosemajumder of Google and me that helped set the record straight about discrepancies.  While the problem of click fraud has been widely covered by media outlets ranging from the Wall St. Journal to Search Engine Watch, Forbes (and Greenberg) have always been on the leading edge. This is still the case today as Andy wrote and excellent piece on the problem titled, "Google Faces The Slickest Click Fraud Yet."  The article focuses on the work of Harvard professor Ben Edelman.  Ben's site (www.benedelman.org) is an impressive compilation of research and reports on a wide range of topics with a focus on spyware, click fraud and online advertising. The article highlights "a new form of click fraud that accomplishes what online fraud watchdogs might have once thought impossible: a scam that not only simulates valid clicks on a Google ad sold to an advertiser, but seems to result in a real customer who spends money on the advertiser's site."  This is the worst case scenario for an advertiser and Edelman is right on in his method of identifying the threat.  While this approach is limited in it's ability to scale, it is the most significant finding since Click Forensics identified the "Bahama Botnet". I applaud the work of Ben Edelman and others as well as Andy and the folks at Forbes for continuing to shine the light on this ongoing problem for our industry.  For over four years now, we have been on a mission to "ensure advertisers get what they pay for".  As long as Google lacks transparency, there will be click fraud.  Ben ends by saying, "Google owes its advertisers something better than that."  I agree and we need more guys like Ben to help hold their feet to the fire. Tom Cuthbert

By Steve O'Brien, Click Forensics Just when you thought the fraudsters couldn’t get any more sophisticated … they surprise you.  Click Forensics researchers have recently discovered one of the most advanced sources of click fraud we’ve seen.  We’ve named it the “Bahama botnet” because when first discovered it was redirecting traffic through 200,000 parked domain sites located in the Bahamas.  It has since been reprogrammed to redirect through other intermediate sites hosted in Amsterdam, the U.K., and even San Jose, CA, but the Bahama name stuck. Interestingly, the Bahama botnet appears to be closely related to the recent spate of “scareware” attacks, such as the one perpetrated against The New York Times digital site just a few days ago, reported by ComputerWorld.  Visitors to the NYTimes.com site were greeted with a pop-up informing them their computer was infected and directed to an authentic-looking site where they could install a program called Personal Antivirus.  Users duped into purchasing this phony software were then infected with a Trojan that gave control of their computer to an unknown third party that we now know to be part of a gang in the Ukraine. We believe the Bahama botnet is controlled by this same gang, or their neighbors down the street.  More info about the “Ukranian fan club” can be found in Dancho Danchev’s excellent security blog.  We’re pretty sure the Bahama botnet is related to the Ukranian fan club and the NYTimes.com scareware because they each phone back to a bogus “Windows protection” domain located on the same IP address. These sources were originally identified by the Black Hat community, but we believe Click Forensics is the first to discover the breadth and depth of click fraud being perpetrated by the botnets it controls.  And the botnet is incredibly insidious. The video below shows the botnet in action, caught on film and narrated by Click Forensic’s own Matt Graham, the infected machine will exhibit some really funky behavior.  Clicks on organic search results are redirected through a series of parked domains across a number of top-tier ad providers (search engines and ad networks), eventually arriving at an advertiser unrelated to the original query.  The user is momentarily confused, but likely just performs the search again, this time with easy success. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzEqrOmzKzM&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6&hd=1&border=1] What makes the botnet so insidious is that it operates intermittently so that the user doesn’t really know that anything is wrong.  Additionally, it can operate independently of the user because the authors appear to be building a large database of authentically user-generated search queries. [caption id="attachment_718" align="alignright" width="500" caption="Seemingly random clicks discovered through advanced pattern detection"] [/caption] And because the queries come from many different machines (IPs) across a broad segment of the Internet population, it is very difficult to find and identify these clicks as fraudulent.  But these auto-generated clicks were not able to disguise themselves well enough to escape Click Forensics anomaly detection algorithms.  Additionally, large amounts of non-converting clicks were spotted in the data we receive from advertisers.  From there, our team was able to hone in on the source of the Bahama botnet.

In February of 2006, Click Forensics was just getting off the ground.  We recognized the problem of click fraud was a big problem and that building a solution would be tough technical challenge. [caption id="attachment_709" align="alignright" width="248" caption="Dr. Tuzhilin with the Click Forensics founding team in 2006"] [/caption] We decided to bring in an expert in the field of data mining and anomaly detection in click stream analysis.  That expert was Dr. Alex Tuzhilin.  Alex spent the day with us at our offices in San Antonio and provided us a road map for the evolution of our approach to identifying invalid traffic.  His contribution to us at that point was essential and provided tremendous insight.  After reviewing our approach he commented, "Click Forensics has good data and this is a source of their advantage over the search engines. My role is to work with them to refine the scoring methodology to improve accuracy. Their approach is to incorporate as much data as possible to improve accuracy. The search providers simply don't have enough data to have the most accurate approach." Shortly after Alex visit to Texas, I received a call from the lead attorney representing Lane’s Gifts in their lawsuit against Google.  He said, “Tom, I just hired your Ph.D!”  He told me that the judge in that case had mandated that an outside consultant review Google’s click fraud detection methods and publish paper on the efficacy.  Alex spent many weeks at Google and wrote an insightful paper detailing their approach, ultimately describing it as “reasonable”.  The Lane’s Gift case was settled and Alex returned to his role as a professor at NYU. Today we are thrilled to announce that Dr. Tuzhilin has joined the Click Forensics Advisory Board.  Few individuals have had more real-world and academic experience in the measurement of online traffic quality and its effect on advertisers.  His work has helped move the industry toward standards and cooperation.  After visiting us in Austin a few weeks ago and meeting with our technology team, Alex said, “Having firsthand experience reviewing the state of the art in ad network traffic management, I was impressed with the level of technical sophistication the team exhibits and I was impressed with the directions they are going, Click Forensics has played a leadership role in helping the online advertising community to monitor quality of clicks on ads, including identification of invalid clicks. I look forward to continuing to work with the team.” In additional to Dr. Tuzhilin, we have also added Dr. William Wright, the Chief Scientist at Paypal.  Dr. Wright, a Ph.D. in cognitive science, is an artificial intelligence expert who has built numerous analytical and predictive systems over the past twenty years, including the Falcon Credit Card Fraud Detection System at HNC, the Advanced Fraud Screen system at CyberSource, and numerous adversarial modeling systems for the U.S. military.  After spending time with our team, William concluded, “Click Forensics has built a strong team of developers using very advanced machine learning and data mining techniques to detect fraud and measure traffic quality, they are pioneering a new area of fraud detection and I’m finding it satisfying to work closely with them on leveraging lessons from my past experience combating credit card and banking fraud.” One out of every five employees at Click Forensics hold a Ph.D.  Adding the expertise of Alex and William dramatically enhances our ability to meet our goal of providing the state of the art approach to traffic quality management.  I appreciate their contributions and look forward to benefiting from their knowledge in the future. Tom Cuthbert