The Bot Baseline Fraud in Digital Advertising

Appendix AGlossary of TermsAdAn online advertisement of any sortAd FraudThe inclusion in reports, bills, or other analytics ofanything other than natural persons consuming adsin the normal course of using any deviceAd InjectionThe visible or hidden insertion of ads into an app, webpage, or other online resource without the consent of thepublisher or operator of that resourceAdvertiserA company, brand, or individual who pays a third partyto display or act as agent for the display of adsAdwareSoftware, often automatically installed on user devices,that displays visible or hidden ads to users to boost adconsumptionAutoplayThe playing of a sound, video, or any other type of media,generally as part of an ad, without any user interaction,often upon the user’s loading of a web page or otherresourceBot(s)(a/k/a Non-Human Traffic or NHT) Automated entitiescapable of consuming any digital content, including text,video, images, audio, and other data. These agents mayintentionally or unintentionally view ads, watch videos,listen to radio spots, fake viewability, and click on adsBot PercentageThe percentage of a given portion of online advertisingtraffic consumed by botsBot DetectionThe detection and differentiation of bot traffic and botimpressions from human traffic and human impressionsBot FraudAd fraud specifically perpetrated by botsBot ImpressionAn impression consumed by a botBot TrafficAutomated website or other online traffic and/orad consumption driven by or resulting from botsBotnetA group of infected computers that generate automatedweb events. The infrastructure used to create many typesof botsBotprintsA unique combination of directly observed properties in agiven impression, page view, or other online event whichcollectively identifies that event as bot-driven by a specifictype of botBrokerThird-party arbitragers that buy traffic from suppliersand sell to publishers; often media agencies, retargetingplatforms, or traffic extension platformsCampaignA series of ads on behalf of an advertiser that sharea single idea and theme, and which may be made up ofdifferent types of ads, and which may be run on multiplepublishers, sites, or other channels and in multipleformatsCampaign MonitoringMonitoring the various types of ads and their formats, andthe publishers, sites, and channels on or in which they aredisplayed, for the purpose of detecting differing levels ofad fraud, allowing for the optimization of spending toreduce ad fraudCash-Out SiteA website, app, or other resource that is capable ofdelivering ads, and is operated by perpetrators of ad fraudfor the purpose of exfiltrating money from the onlineadvertising ecosystem52