Listen here.There are more online ads sold and paid for every single day than there are human beings on earth to consume those ads. That is the revelation from Marc Dhalluin of TruthsetsOnline, a South African based in Los Angeles, whose passionate mission is fighting global ad fraud. He talks to Chris Steyn about his mentor Dr Augustine Fou; the methods they use to uncover ad fraud, the types of ad fraud out there; how AI has “on the criminal side of it, improved in unbelievable leaps and bounds the rate at which these schemes can be deployed”; the millions of fake websites and fake apps loading ads: and the billions lost by brands who are not getting what they think they are paying for. “Everybody in the supply chain benefits from it…The only party that does not benefit is the one who signs the cheque, the brand, the brand team, the advertiser…It doesn't mean everybody's complicit. It doesn't mean everybody's creating it, but they're sure as chips benefiting from the volumes generated by the fraud.” Dhalluin shares usefule advice for brands to better protect themselves..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:01.1)A South African based in Los Angeles is fighting global ad fraud. Mark Dhalluin of TruthsetsOnline is with us now. Morning Mark.Marc Dhalluin (00:14.144)Chris and thanks very much and hello to all your viewers.Chris Steyn (00:17.942)You're welcome. So how do you go about exposing ad fraud?Marc Dhalluin (00:24.962)You go about using the right tools, we call them more modern tools, which really have revealed over the last many years, it's not as though it's necessarily new, just the levels of...ad fraud within the digital advertising industry.In my particular case, I certainly didn't uncover this. I work with a Dr. Augustine Fou out of New York City who has made this his life's passion and has been doing this for the last 15, 20 years.Chris Steyn (01:03.33)Hm. Tell us about Dr. Fou. Marc Dhalluin (01:06.318)He initially built himself a set of tools because as he was in the industry, he was in the digital advertising industry, and he built himself a set of tools because he didn't believe the numbers that he was seeing coming back from the publishing platforms or his advertising partners, et cetera. And over the years, he realised that whilst he was using these tools for himself and his own, if you want, portfolio of clients, that there was a far greater need to be served. And I think in his case, a crusade to embark on, which was to uncover or rather let it be more widely known that the numbers are far worse than the industry was acknowledging at the time.Chris Steyn (02:02.729)Is it even possible to calculate the losses?Marc Dhalluin (02:06.163)No, it's impossible to actually calculate, to give a definitive number because we don't always know exactly how much is out there. There are new schemes that are uncovered weekly and monthly. But what we do know is that certainly with the kind of forensic or deterministic, and your technical tools that Dr. Fou developed - and he's not alone, others have done the same -that the numbers, as I say, are extraordinarily high and high enough to worry about. We're not talking about little numbers. We're talking about significant numbers.Chris Steyn (02:46.775)So what types of ad fraud are you mostly uncovering?Marc Dhalluin (02:51.861)So there are two significant sources of ad fraud. And remember that predicating all of us, an advertiser spends money wanting to put an advert in front of a human being. They cannot, no advertiser ever says, I want proof that somebody saw my ad. The proof you want is that your ad was placed in a position where somebody could see it. It's as simple as that. And so we look for any anomaly that may indicate the fact that either the traffic that caused an ad to load in the digital ecosystem…unlike back in the old days, we opened a magazine or turned a page in a newspaper or turned on a television or the radio in the digital space, it takes traffic as in a human saying, I want to look at this website. And that creates, if you want the advertising opportunity, the website's not sitting there with ads on it saying, where's my human? So on the one hand, you get non-human traffic initiating ad calls. So on the one hand, it's the traffic and let's call it fake traffic or in our industry, IVT, invalid traffic. The other is the conscious manipulation of the ad space itself. So whilst it may or may not have been human traffic that initiated the ad call, the ad is not placed in a position where a human could ever have seen it. It's hidden.Chris Steyn (04:26.774)Mm. Who all benefits from this ad for all?Marc Dhalluin (04:32.749)Everybody in the supply chain benefits from it, Chris. It doesn't mean that they're complicit. This is an industry predicated on volume. It's all about more. I want to buy more impressions, as we call them, spaces to put my ads in. So it's all about volume and scale. The business model of the industry has a foundation based on volume. So everybody is rewarded on volume one way or the other. The only party that does not benefit is the one who signs the check, the brand, the brand team, the advertiser. So once again, it's important. It doesn't mean everybody's complicit. It doesn't mean everybody's creating it, but they're sure as chips benefiting from the volumes generated by the fraud.Chris Steyn (05:24.906)Hm. So do you think that the majority of brands do not get what they're paying for?Marc Dhalluin (05:31.764)I’m sure the majority of brands do not get what they're paying for. I'm very sure. I think that there is, or not I think, there is in the industry an accepted cost of doing business. Unlike the analog world where a newspaper is printed and supposedly distributed to a reader, in the online ad world you and I may open a website, but our Wi-Fi signal can drop. Now, the mere fact that we asked the website to open an ad, assuming it's an ad delivery platform, an ad showing platform, an ad will have been caused to have been shown. The fact that you and I had a little technical glitch on our side is nobody's fault, but the ads will still be paid for. So there is a cost, an underlying cost of doing business.The other things that are costs of doing business is that over 50% of all internet traffic is non-human. Let's call it bots. But it's not all of that is bad. A lot of that traffic, I'm talking about in the marketing world, a lot of that traffic is what helps us have our websites recognised by search crawlers so we can rank higher on the pages. The advent of AI has seen a plethora, an enormous spike in bots running around eating content. Every time one of those bots or bits of code hits a page, it will cause an ad to load. So there's a cost of doing business.Chris Steyn (07:08.012)Hm, I was just going to ask you about the role of AI in ad fraudMarc Dhalluin (07:13.015)So in ad fraud itself, AI has done nothing to date to help uncover ad fraud in ways that aren't already being done.However, on the criminal side of it, it has improved in unbelievable leaps and bounds the rate at which these schemes can be deployed. So at the moment, and it's not to say it's not going to, play in our favour. At the moment, AI is enabling, if you want, the publisher side more, the people who create platforms that ultimately are offering advertising space for sale.Chris Steyn (07:55.905)I would imagine that most brands are well aware of ad fraud and take precautions. But do those precautions cover them adequately? Can they truly protect themselves?Marc Dhalluin (08:10.507)I say no, but it is qualified. I think very quickly, there are three distinct kinds of brand teams out there. The one knows nothing about ad fraud whatsoever, believe it or not. Wow, fraud doesn't enter our lexicon. Secondly, we know about it, but believe it to be something that is totally under control. One, we've been led to believe for years and years by industry leadership bodies, that the numbers are really small and we take precautions. In that particular group, which is primarily, think, where your question was angled, we believe that there is a measurement layer missing and we believe that therefore the reporting is inadequate. There is an information deficit. So no, the brands that we work with who already do engage to, if you want to protect themselves or to know their fraud positions, we routinely see numbers that surprise them and up indeed ourselves sometimes. So the answer is no, not well enough.Chris Steyn (09:15.81)So what is the most useful advice that you can give brands?Marc Dhalluin (09:21.547)It is to run a proper benchmark test using some kind of forensic tool. You need to be able to use a tool that can interrogate at the lowest level, which is the impression level. You need to know what is happening during and after the ad is actually served to determine, and you need the data to back it up. So you've got to have visibility of the data to know whether indeed your objective of putting an ad in front of a human being.If you don't want to go that route, which would be crazy for any advertiser, there are also common sense things to do. For example, never use audience extensions. Now to your audience, an audience extension is where I say I want to advertise on Facebook. Generally speaking, and in terms of the ad fraud circles, fraud is relatively low on Facebook - if five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 % is low. But where the real damage comes in is when we allow a Facebook or a LinkedIn or an Instagram to broadcast our ads to trusted partner networks. So the first thing is, and that's where the real rot sets in, never allow that. And the second thing is to use common sense. Have a look at your numbers and ask for a number and look to see if there are anomalies.Chris Steyn (10:44.3)Hm. Anything else that the public should be aware of, the consumers of these ads.Marc Dhalluin (10:49.933)No, no, not not very much. Chris, we're not talking about scam ads. We're not talking about ads that promise you a fortune…,. We're talking about what an advertiser, a brand wants to get their message to market. We're talking about what they did not get. So from the consumer's side, no. But interestingly enough, any of us who use a mobile device, who play games, who use weather apps. You know that the alarm clock apps that many of us use while we're sleeping are loading ads? Is that fraud? No, that's not fraud. That's just pure…taking advantage of something. Those people who play games on their apps, there are millions and millions of ads loading in the background. They're not designed to be seen by the person using the app. So it adds another layer. That is that the publisher doesn't have to be a bot, it doesn't have to be a publisher that humans aren't using. So absolutely, there are millions, millions of fake websites, fake apps out there that are loading ads. It doesn't just happen where human beings are not working or not consuming content. From the consumer point of view, there's no problem.Chris Steyn Mark, can you tell us how big is digital advertising?Marc Dhalluin Chris, the numbers vary, but globally we're talking about a trillion dollar industry. The numbers in South Africa are between 35 and 45 billion dollars a year. But consider this. There are more online ads sold and paid for every single day than there are human beings on earth to consume those ads. Who in their right mind buys online advertising without having correct checks and balances in place when you know those kinds of numbers.Chris Steyn (12:15.16)Thank you. That was Mark Dhalluin of TruthsetsOnline. Based in Los Angeles, fighting ad fraud globally. Thank you, Mark.Marc Dhalluin (12:25.672)Thanks very much.