Domains have always been fertile ground for Ad Fraud.
The core dependency on domains in digital advertising has given rise to many fraudulent activities accounting for billions of dollars in losses. To date, fraudsters use spoofed domains to fool advertisers, generate invalid traffic from spam domains, and use the latest 404bot ads.txt fraud to mint those Ad Dollars.
What's New?
At Botman, we're obsessed with being on the fraudsters' trail and figuring out their next move.
In pursuit of the same and analyzing a million more clicks, our traffic intelligence system noticed a high percentage of invalid traffic generating from multiple sources with one common play between them. The domains where the ads were viewed or the engagement took place were all newly registered domains with an age of 30 days or less.
Domain Age Fraud
This category of fraud consists of domain referrals having an age of 30 days or less. Each day many domains are registered and used to spam immediately. This fraud pattern has been difficult to catch due to its increasing numbers. It is a part of a small percentage of the total number of newly registered domains.
The fraudsters behind these newly-registered domains use them to send spam/invalid traffic and also drive traffic to these harmful websites hoping that users will fall victim before a domain has been analyzed for its reputation.
Domain Age Trap by Botman
The Domain Age Trap, aka DAG flags all domains with ages less than 30 days. This trap will give advertisers and Ad Networks more power to block all IVTs from such domains, being the most likely victims.
Activate the trap from Threat Control Center by starting the Domain Age Trap.