Brands Serve Ads to Known Bots: Adalytics
An Adalytics report reveals that brands, including high profile brands like Disney, Hershey, Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Microsoft, are advertising to known bots — such as web crawlers. This raises concerns that verification providers such as DoubleVerify and IAS are more likely than previously thought to be serving ads to malicious bots too. Sources for AdExchanger said the known bots, appearing for example on IAB Tech Lab’s bot lists, should have been easily identified.