Exposed: Mobile-Web scams ! (6)
If you are buying Mobile Web, especially in the US, then read this.
(This affects ALL DSP's, regardless of their name & "reputation": Turn, TradeDesk, MediaMath, AppNexus, X+1, DataXu, and all lower-tier DSP's are affected.)
Recently we discovered a major flaw when buying traffic from Chrome on Android.
Google switched on a "data saver" feature for anyone browsing the web on their Chrome browser in Android. What this means is that it uses cached data from a set of specific IP's called the "Chrome Compression Proxy".
The result is: users from anywhere in the world are possibly being counted as US traffic! The "Chrome Compression Proxy IP's", which are on by default, are all US-based proxies, so users are seen to be from the US. But could just as well be in... Indonesia, or anywhere else in the world. It's a real issue.
Full tech thread is on our blog here: http://rtb.cat/mobilewebalert.html
We offer clients a workaround, which is a bit clumsy but it does work.
Perhaps others here already knew this, but it was (scary) news to us!
If you are running your own bidder then the IP ranges are listed in the blogpost too. We can't filter out traffic based on the "HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR“ on AppNexus. But we can do this on our own proprietary bidder. (ie: less traffic)
Tijn pointed out that using HTTPS fixes it too, and I've passed that to the dev's. I didn't get an answer yet whether we can filter this pre-bid.
So if your mobile-web campaigns don't always respond the way you'd expect, then this is a likely cause.
Best,
Jen
What? Seriously?
These proxies are total nightmare!
This totally kills of all 1-click/2-click flows as well as MSISDN detection is probably out business.
Same reason why UC Browsers and Opera Mini's doesn't convert.
Is it moving then the ISP to Google? I see that more and more in our stats in combination with Chrome
Originally Posted by blueflag
If you look at the thread I posted on our site, (or get one of the techies to dig into it) you will see that there are certain workarounds. But they require changes at the bid-level. Meaning at the point of the actual OpenRTB connection.
As you will read: AppNexus support defended their position by claiming "it was a mess".
However, from the (minimal) test data we have seen so far this is mainly when targeting US mobile web. And even in the US, sometimes it's fine, other times not.
But lack of data prevents me from giving a definitive answer.
It requires your own ad-server to pull the logs of what really arrived, not what the DSP says was sent. As I said ALL DSP's are affected, and ALL DSP's have been keeping very quiet about this.
Do you think it affects just DSP's or also media buy platforms like Google/Bing?
Originally Posted by eduardo2
Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Display / Media Buying