What you need to know in advertising today
Click farms, botnets, and domain spoofing are infiltrating everything from websites and video inventory to over-the-top and connected devices and mobile apps.
But the fastest-growing ad fraud issue in 2018 was in-app ad fraud on mobile devices. Verification company DoubleVerify's Fraud Lab said it saw an 800% increase year over year in the number of fraud attempts that it blocked. (The company wouldn't give raw numbers.)
Click here to read more about the growing problems with in-app ad fraud.
In other news:
WPP CEO unveiled a three-year plan to restructure the holding company to prepare for rapid changes in the industry, reports The Wall Street Journal. Among other cost-saving measures, WPP will cut its workforce by 3,500 but pump money into creative leadership.
With digital ad revenue dwindling, media companies are taking another stab at selling their tech to publishers. New York Media is working with Po.et to power blockchain-based development in its CMS.
'Giving stuff away for free won't work' for Victoria's Secret and Pink. Victoria's Secret's Pink is running aggressive promotions that are pulling demand forward and hurting long-term pricing power, according to a note from Jefferies analyst Randal Konik.
Some apps can track your phone's location more than 14,000 times a day - here's how to turn that off if you own an iPhone or Android. An investigation by The New York Times found that a huge number of apps track granular data, which is sometimes sold to companies for purposes like targeted advertising.
Streaming-news service Cheddar is making its content available on Magic Leap augmented reality devices, reports Axios. The content will be the same as the channels outside of the AR environment for now, but the company might experiment with creating custom content specifically for Magic Leap in the future.