IT and Media news update May 18

Spike in advertising fraud

The number of advertising fraud schemes spiked by over 70% year-over-year from 2020 to 2021. This year, an unprecedented number of schemes targeted CTV and video, software platform DoubleVerify  says in a report. The company estimates these schemes attempted to steal more than USD 6-8 million each month from advertisers – and are costing publishers, too.

“These CTV schemes alone may have siphoned USD 140 million from publishers in 2021”, DV says.

Government requests about Meta customer

Global government request for data about Meta/Facebook users increased 2% from 211,055 to 214,777. Of the total volume, the US continues to submit the largest number of requests, followed by India, Germany, France, Brazil and the UK, Meta says in a transparency report.

In the US, we received 59,996 requests, which was 6% less than the total we received in the first half of 2021. Non-disclosure orders prohibiting Meta from notifying the user about that the government requested data about them remained consistent at 70% in the first and second halves of 2021.

The company stresses that it does not provice governments with “back doors” to people’s information and comply “only where we have a good-faith belief that the law requires us to do so. When we do comply, we only produce information that is narrowly tailored to that request. If we determine that a request appears to be deficient or overly broad, we push back and will fight in court, if necessary.”