[hedora]

All available credible evidence says they’re sending money to sanctioned entities and intentionally defrauding their customers. The fraud rate is somewhere between 50-90% of revenue, and adds up to billions.

The article cites specific examples of fraudulent spend, with screenshots, etc., on comically easy to detect domain names, including ones that other parts of Google block.

Also, they’ve progressively taken action to expand the percentage of advertisers they can defraud, and also to ensure the fraud is difficult to detect.

On top of all that, it is only possible due to monopolistic bundling of YouTube and the ad networks, in a scheme that could be a textbook example from “anti-trust litigation 101”.

[paxys]

Why not post this "credible evidence" then?

> The fraud rate is somewhere between 50-90% of revenue, and adds up to billions.

This is the only part that is relevant, and if you have a source for this then do share it.

[blincoln]

It's in the original report, which several other people have already linked to:

https://adalytics.io/blog/invalid-google-video-partner-truev...

There's a detailed methodology section. I haven't verified their results, but they report finding things like muted, autoplaying ads even on big-name sites like the New York Times.

A few key quotes:

"For one major infrastructure brand approximately 73% of their TrueView skippable in-stream budget was spent on Google Video Partner sites or apps whose ad delivery does not appear to be consistent with the TrueView or in-stream requirements."

"A major consumer goods brand had 75% of their TrueView budget delivered against Google Video Partner (GVP) sites or apps. 56% of their total TrueView budget was spent against websites which served TrueView ads in muted or non-in-stream video players [...] 19% of their TrueView skippable in-stream ad budget delivered against ineligible mobile apps which are not video streaming apps[...]"

"A Fortune 500 brand had approximately 57% of their total TrueView in-stream ad budget served on GVP sites and apps. 35% of their total TrueView budget was spent against websites which served TrueView ads in muted or non-in-stream video players [...] 8% of their TrueView skippable in-stream ad budget delivered against in-eligible mobile apps which are not video streaming apps."

I'm no marketing expert, but 43-73% of one's ad budget basically being thrown away seems like not great results.