Welcome to the Dark Side: Analyzing the Revenue Flows of Fraud in the Online Ad Ecosystem
The online advertising market has recently reached the 500 billion dollar mark. To accommodate the need to match a user with the highest bidder at a fraction of a second, it has moved towards a complex, automated and often opaque model that involves numerous agents and intermediaries. Stimulated by the lack of transparency, but also the enormous potential profits, bad actors have found ways to circumvent restrictions, and generate substantial revenue that can support websites with objectionable or even illegal content.
Authors
- Evangelos P. Markatos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3563-7733)
- Nicolas Kourtellis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5674-1698)
- Panagiotis Papadopoulos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1928-6534)
- Emmanouil Papadogiannakis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8959-2465)
Institutions
- University of Crete (GR)
- FORTH Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (GR)
- Telefonica Research and Development (ES)
- Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (GR)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-04-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3696410.3714899
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.07
Funders
- Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas