For many years now advertisers have needed to mitigate various types of ad fraud including domain spoofing, impression fraud, and click fraud amongst others. Linked to this, advertisers have also had to contend with the fact that around 11% of budgets are now lost to made for advertising (MFA) sites – low-quality websites created primarily to generate ad revenue rather than provide valuable content.
Now, with the rise of AI, advertisers are confronted with additional ad fraud types, as well as the advent of AI “slop”, both of which represent clear threats to precious ad budgets. Here we look at some of the key types of ad fraud in the age of AI, and what brands can do to protect against them.
New types of ad fraud – from AI slop to headless browsing
AI is making ad fraud easier to conduct by enabling the rapid creation of highly convincing fake content, websites, and user behaviours at scale.
Fraudsters can, for instance, use AI to generate entire networks of made-for-advertising (MFA) sites filled with AI “slop”: synthetic articles, fake videos, and automatically scraped or rewritten content designed to attract ads.
The scale of the threat posed by AI slop should not be underestimated. According to figures from Deepsee.io, there has been a 717% increase in AI slop sites detected in the last year alone. AI slop is overwhelming the programmatic supply chain and making it harder than ever for advertisers to connect with high-quality inventory and relevant audiences.
Alongside the rise of AI slop, advertisers also need to deal with the fact that AI bots are amplifying existing fraud schemes. One contributing factor is the availability of “headless” browsers. These tools behave like a standard browser but run without a graphical interface; handling web pages, executing JavaScript, and performing actions like clicking or scrolling in the background. Rather than displaying content visually, headless browsers are controlled through scripts or command-line input, making it highly efficient for automated tasks.
These tools can simulate human interactions including mouse movements, clicks, and scrolling, mimicking real users and generating fake ad impressions or clicks. Headless browsers pose a particular challenge to advertisers because of their advanced evasion techniques. What’s more, by using cloud infrastructure, attackers can deploy vast numbers of headless browsers simultaneously, flooding ad campaigns with fraudulent engagement and distorting performance metrics.
Combating new ad fraud types with telco-verified IDs
To overcome these threats, advertisers need to know that 1) their content is being displayed on high-quality inventory (and not MFA/AI slop sites) and 2) that their target audience is viewing the content (rather than a bot or headless browser).
A promising approach to meeting these needs is to combine first-party data from publishers and brands with customer intelligence from telcos to build and activate audiences at scale for programmatic delivery.
In this model, publishers share privacy-first identifiers that represent visitors to their websites or apps with their telco partners. The telcos then verify whether the ID matches a known subscriber on their network, effectively confirming that the site visitor is a real human and not a bot.
Brands and agencies can also use a second identifier, verified through the same process, to activate targeted campaigns aimed at their ideal audiences. The key benefit of this method is that it gives advertisers and agencies confidence in the validity and attribution of their audiences. In other words, they can be assured that their ad spend is reaching real people – and not just any people, but the right people for their brand.
Telco-verified IDs offer a powerful line of defence against new types of ad fraud by leveraging data that’s 100% verified at source to ensure ads are served only to genuine users alongside genuine and high-quality content. As such, they represent a valuable tool in the fight against fraud and a vital asset in any brand’s advertising strategy.
