Advertisers can spend billions of dollars on programmatic ad impressions that never reach a real person. When bots and other forms of invalid traffic (IVT) enter the equation, they waste ad spend, distort campaign data, and make it harder to know whether a media investment is actually working. Unfortunately, fraudulent impressions can look just like ordinary campaign activity in the numbers, which makes them difficult to spot without the right detection tools.
Micro FAQ
What is ad fraud?
Ad fraud is the practice of generating fake or misleading advertising activity to capture money that would otherwise go to legitimate media. It can take many forms, including bots generating impressions and clicks, fraudulent websites disguising low-quality inventory, and other tactics that make automated activity look like real consumer behavior.
Approaches to Ad Fraud Detection and Prevention
Most major media buying platforms have built-in tools to detect and prevent fraudulent activity. These ad verification tools can analyze traffic and impressions for signs of invalid activity, monitor campaigns for suspicious patterns, and block known sources of fraudulent traffic. Some platforms also integrate with third-party verification providers, giving advertisers another layer of oversight to assess whether their campaigns are reaching legitimate audiences.
How Blockboard’s Blockchain Technology Verifies Ad Delivery
An impression only has value when an advertiser can guarantee that there’s a real person on the other side of it.
Blockboard approaches that problem with two layers of verification: Blockify and Blockade. Rather than an afterthought or add-on, verification is built into the foundation of the platform, with fraud prevention and impression verification taking place before and after the bid. Together, they create an end-to-end verification process that no other platform offers.
Blockify Filters Fraud Before the Bid
Blockify is Blockboard’s pre-bid verification layer. Before Blockboard places a bid, it evaluates the ad opportunity and filters out inventory that doesn’t meet its standards for authenticity.
The process is built on smart contracts, which apply the verification rules automatically before the bid is placed. That means Blockboard doesn’t need to wait until after a campaign runs to look for fraudulent impressions. Suspicious bid requests can be filtered out before they become part of the media buy.
Blockade Verifies Every Delivered Impression
Blockade is the second layer of verification after an impression has been delivered. Blockboard’s platform analyzes each impression to verify that it was seen by a real human and checks for anomalies that could indicate invalid activity.
The verification data is recorded on the Ethereum blockchain, creating an immutable record of each impression. That record cannot be changed retroactively, giving advertisers a permanent audit trail of what was delivered and providing a verifiable chain of custody for impression data. For media buyers and agencies, that means cleaner campaign data, greater confidence in reporting, and better visibility into whether the impressions being reported actually reached real people.
If an impression can’t be verified, Blockboard doesn’t count it as a valid impression or charge the advertiser for it. Those dollars are instead re-invested at no additional cost. The result is a verification process that operates throughout the delivery cycle, from the initial bid request through the final impression.
See Your Ads Reach Real People
Get a closer look at how Blockboard helps lower CPMs on streaming ads by identifying and removing fraudulent impressions. Protect your media spend and drive returns with a blockchain-backed guarantee that 100% of ad impressions reach actual humans.
