Ad Fraud In Our Own Backyard with Shailin Dhar

The online advertising industry is a giant casino. Giant technology companies are the casino owners, online publishers are the casino employees, the brand advertisers are the victims who keep returning to the casino to lose their money, and the small adtech companies are the sharks who make lots of money exploiting the inefficiencies of the system.

One of these smaller adtech companies is called eZanga. eZanga sells “pre-filtered traffic.” Pre-filtered traffic means traffic that will pass through bot detection filters. A publisher can purchase traffic to their website so that the ads on that website get viewed.

eZanga describes this technology as “marketing,” and has won a giant contract with United States government to handle advertising for the GSA. Advertising fraud does not just promote misinformation–it is now taking our tax dollars and spending it on paid traffic.

If any of this is confusing to you, don’t worry. We explain it all in today’s episode with Shailin Dhar, the advertising fraud expert who wrote a detailed report about eZanga and its contract with the US Government. Shailin was previously on the show to give an overview of ad fraud, and what his work as an ad fraud investigator entails.

Also, Shailin will be a speaker at our third Meetup, Wednesday May 3rd at Galvanize in San Francisco. The theme of this Meetup is Fraud and Risk in Software. We will have great food, engaging speakers, and a friendly, intellectual atmosphere. To find out more, go to softwareengineeringdaily.com/meetup.

Ad Fraud in Our Own Backyard: The Dhar Method

Transcript provided by We Edit Podcasts. Software Engineering Daily listeners can go to weeditpodcasts.com/sed to get 20% off the first two months of audio editing and transcription services. Thanks to We Edit Podcasts for partnering with SE Daily. Please click here to download the eZanga transcript.