Announcing adChain Audits: Your Independent Solution to Ad Fraud
MetaX Team
Over the last few months, MetaX has been silently brewing up, yes you guessed it, new adChain tech! To determine the authenticity of traffic and reduce fraud, we developed adChain Audits by incorporating machine learning with human precision. Learn more about our new product in the official press release here.
What is adChain Audits?
adChain Audits is a product with consultative services that ensures campaign validity and optimizes media spend for publishers, advertisers, agencies, and brands. Through adChain Audits, data from digital omnichannel traffic sources is analyzed by independent auditors to identify malicious bots and more advanced fraudulent techniques that bypass IVT detection vendors.
MetaX works openly with clients, directly sharing all the data gathered, to provide tools necessary to make decisions as to where and how to allocate ad spend. As an independent company aiming to cultivate full transparency within the ad tech space through projects like the adChain Registry, we have a true incentive to end ad fraud. The value of adChain Audits is being realized by a few early adopters. For example, STX Entertainment of Horizon Media, reduced their nefarious bot traffic from 20% to 1% and fraudulent site traffic from 14% to 3%.
Why did we develop adChain Audits?
It has been over a year since CEO Ken Brook published the first MetaX blog post that took an honest look at the ad tech landscape. However, much to our concern, we continue to see upward trends in ad fraud.
- In 2018 alone, it is estimated that advertisers spent $19 billion on fraudulent ads in 2018, which is equivalent to $51 million lost daily.
- 1 in 5 ad-serving websites are visited exclusively by fraud bots.
- Google removed 700k harmful apps from the Play Store.
- 2 million Instagram accounts purged every month
Aside from the statistics alone, it is important to note that the advertising industry is stuck in a cycle where industry players are either in denial of the truth or turn a blind eye to indirectly benefit from ad fraud. Name one marketer who wants to admit to their boss that they are losing thousands, if not millions, in ad spend to fraudulent campaign traffic. Try explaining to the middlemen that without ad fraud, their careers may no longer exist. This spiral of delusion is deeply rooted and can only be untangled through a new approach to detect ad fraud.
With this goal in mind, adChain Audits provides a clean look at campaign spend and offers recommended blacklist domains and apps to clients, giving them a clear, hands-on approach to their daily traffic results. Since we are not driven by the market cycle and operate independently, we can share reliable and transparent data with clients.
What are our next steps?
Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten our beloved adChain Registry! In 2019, we aim to feed data from adChain Audits into the adChain Registry. This will provide the community with objective, data-backed signals as to why publisher domains are fraudulent or not, and will hopefully encourage more informed self-governance.
As noted in last year’s blog post identifying some of the adChain Registry’s shortcomings, we aim to improve the UI/UX and navigation of the dApp. As the first to launch a Token-Curated Registry on the Ethereum Mainnet, we have a lot to learn and are continuously evolving from community feedback. The adChain Decentralized Server is a concept we have kept in mind. We are exploring ways to bring this reality to life, however, adoption of the adChain Registry and adChain Audits remain the priority.
For adChain Audits related inquiries, please email hello@metax.io.
