1. marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
You Get What You Pay For
The “Premium” in Premium Publishers is Worth Gold
July 2015
Augustine Fou, PhD.
http://linkd.in/augustinefou
acfou @ mktsci .com
212. 203. 7239

2. July 2015 / Page 1marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
100 million impressions
- 56% bots / NHT
Source: Incapsula, Dec 2014
44 million impressions
- 63%
9.6 million impressions
ad-blocked by user
Source: PageFair, Sep 2014
Paid $0.45 CPM on 100M impressions ($45k) and got 10 million productive impressions = $4.69 eCPM
Avg. $0.45 CPM
10.4X higher effective cost
16 million impressions
- 41%
Source: Turn Oct 2013
When paying for “low cost” inventory from unknown publishers
Distil Networks says 59% bots, May 2015
37% in-view (RTB)
Source: DoubleVerify, Q1 2015

3. July 2015 / Page 2marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
Data on bots (~60%) fully corroborated by 3 different firms
Distil Networks May 2015 – 59% botsIncapsula Dec 2014 – 56% bots
SolveMedia Jan 2015 – 56% bots

4. July 2015 / Page 3marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
Humanness of ad networks varies dramatically
confirmed humans
24% overall average
confirmed bots
16% overall average
declared / search bots
0% overall average
NOTE: There is huge difference between high quality ad networks which actually
have humans versus low quality ad networks which have large amounts of
confirmed bot traffic and literally zero confirmed humans.

5. July 2015 / Page 4marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
Examples of “low cost” / suspect publishers
88%
confirmed bots
0%
confirmed humans

6. July 2015 / Page 5marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
Documented cases dating back to 2013
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou
/what-fraudulent-traffic-looks-like-
research-by-augustine-fou
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou
/how-to-generate-fake-traffic-and-ad-
impressions

7. July 2015 / Page 6marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
But .... when paying higher CPMs to premium publishers
100 million impressions
- 2% bad bots
Source: Marketing Science July 2015
98 million impressions
- 40% 60% in-view (publisher direct)
Source: Sizmek, Apr 2015
35 million impressions
ad-blocked by user
Source: PageFair, Sep 2014
Paid $0.45 CPM on 100M impressions ($45k) and got 35 million productive impressions = $1.28 eCPM
Avg. $0.45 CPM
59 million impressions
- 40%
Source: Turn Oct 2013
“premium publishers typically earn around $1.35 CPM from open exchanges” Source: DCN, May 2015

8. July 2015 / Page 7marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
Viewability rate of premium publishers: 49 – 56 – 60 – 67%
56% viewable
45% viewable
Source: Sizmek, Apr 2015
Source: DoubleVerify April, 2015
Source: Vindico April, 2015
Source: Marketing Science, July 2015
Directly measured, only
premium publishers (60)
60% viewable

9. July 2015 / Page 8marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
Premium publishers actually have real human visitors!
80 – 90%
confirmed humans

10. July 2015 / Page 9marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
Premium Publishers’ Overall Humans vs Bots
confirmed humans
77% overall average
confirmed bots
2% overall average
declared / search bots
1% overall average
Note that 1% confirmed bots does not mean 99% humans; and vice versa 87%
humans does not mean 13% bots. Using a deterministic approach, there are visits
that cannot be sufficiently, accurately labeled and hence are marked uncategorized.

11. July 2015 / Page 10marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
Premium Publishers’ Best Practices
• Never source traffic – premium publishers actually do the hard work of
creating useful content that human visitors actually want to read; so humans go
to their sites and these publishers don’t have to buy more traffic
• Limit “audience extension” – premium publishers use their own social
channels to spread the great content or make it easy for people to discover; they
don’t need to pay other vendors to do audience extension
• Continuously measure yourself – premium publishers can take proactive
steps to measure the levels of bot activity on their site; verify referring traffic
coming to their site and block fraudulent sources
• Allow advertisers to measure – premium publishers who have nothing to
hide should be open to having advertisers deploy their own measurement tags;
but there is no need to have a dozen such measurement tags
• Be transparent, support with data – being “transparent” unfortunately
means a lot of different things, but premium publishers can show down to the
visit level why that visit was a real human (versus a bot)

12. January 2015 / Page 11marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
CONFIDENTIAL
Case Study 2: advertiser increased served ads to humans, less bots
By systematically reducing spend to sites that had the highest incidence of bots,
the advertiser increased ad impressions served to humans, and lowered those
served to bots.

13. January 2015 / Page 12marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
CONFIDENTIAL
Case Study 3: advertiser increases ad served to humans
Period 1 Period 2 Period 3
20% confirmed humans
30% confirmed humans
190k
5k
220k
6k
280k
7k
total goal events
average daily goals
10% confirmed humans

14. July 2015 / Page 13marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
So What?
“If you’re an advertiser looking for returns on your ad
spend, buying ‘premium’ from publishers who can prove
it – i.e. demonstrate higher ‘humanness’ – is worth it’s
weight in gold.
Paying $1.36 eCPM to premium publishers is 3X
better than $4.69 eCPM to suspect ones (after
you discard the waste).
When you buy anything else, you literally get what you
pay for.”
-- Dr. Augustine Fou

15. July 2015 / Page 14marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.
Dr. Augustine Fou
Dr. Augustine Fou – Independent Ad Fraud Researcher
“I research ad fraud, and specifically bots, so I
can advise clients on how to detect and mitigate
the various forms of fraud. This has the most
direct impact on the ROI of their digital
marketing programs.”
FORMER CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, HCG (OMNICOM)
MCKINSEY CONSULTANT
CLIENT SIDE / AGENCY SIDE EXPERIENCE
PROFESSOR AND COLUMNIST
ENTREPRENEUR / SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
PHD MATERIALS SCIENCE (MIT '95) AT AGE 23
ClickZ Articles: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-clickz
Slideshares: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-slideshares
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/84444-augustinefou