On November 6, the Codewise team had the pleasure to participate in an event hosted by the World Economic Forum in New York for the members of its Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI). For this event, the World Economic Forum brought together CEOs and executives of some of the world’s largest companies, senior government officials and academics to discuss a range of anti-corruption initiatives and efforts.
Codewise’s CEO Dr. John Malatesta and CTO Maciej Szlachta joined the event to share their insights on defeating various forms of digital corruption, including ad fraud and digital election meddling. John opened the session titled “The Fourth Industrial Revolution against Corruption” with a presentation introducing the challenge of ad fraud, followed by senior speakers from the United Nations Organization, Thomson Reuters and TransparentBusiness.
What are the costs of Ad Fraud?
Digital ad fraud is a massive issue that affects multiple segments of the global economy, such as the Internet industry, the Media industry, and largest advertisers. It affects advertisers and ad platforms alike. An estimated 9% of all total Digital ad spend, 19 billion dollars are wasted on fraudulent traffic per year, and this number will more than double over the next 4 years (Source: Juniper Research).
This means that advertisers spend tens of billions with zero ROI, and legitimate media lose ad money that they could have earned – which in many cases contributes to the decline of the free press in countries developing and developed alike. Fraudulent revenues help cybercriminals fund their future hacking operations. It is a vicious circle that keeps growing.
Another ugly manifestation of ad fraud is election meddling, which is often done via fraudulent political ads. This is an issue that the world’s democracies are rapidly waking up to, but without the expertise of the AdTech sector, defeating it is hardly possible. Bad actors will always be more agile and nimble than government regulators and watchdogs, simply because they have fewer rules and limitations to follow and are often better compensated for their actions.
What are we doing to make the market better?
The Codewise team is committed to seeding out ad fraud. Our experts are working on advanced anti-fraud technologies that leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning. But solving this global challenge will take more than one company’s resources.
Codewise believes in public-private cooperation, where the AdTech industry offers expertise, knowledge, and technology, while the Public Sector carries out policymaking and enforcement. We are already working with various international organizations and industry associations, as well as the largest ad platforms, providing our consultation and expertise on how to tackle ad fraud and drive it out of the Internet ecosystem.
We believe that the solution to digital fraud lies in a balanced mix of smart policies and advanced technologies. Our experts, like many other bright minds in the industry, are working on these new-generation technologies and products.
We are happy to share our expertise and knowledge with the rest of the world, and we are grateful to the World Economic Forum for hosting the high-level meeting in New York where an outstanding group of Private and Public sector decision-makers was able to discuss a truly comprehensive approach to defeating ad fraud and election meddling, and agree on joint next steps that will us closer to this important goal.
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