Dive Brief: 

• In addition to bot fraud, the automatic buying ad industry faces a problem of URL masking—the act of a publisher misrepresenting its URL. 
• According to research from ad quality firm DoubleVerify, 23% of ads bought are ending up on these masked sites. The problem may be as much as 40% according to Ghostery, which released a product to fight URL masking. 
• URL masking is utilized to make advertisers think their ads are running on premium sites when they are really running on sites with illicit or stolen conten—something that generates high traffic, but low revenue. 

Dive Insight: 

Fraud among advertising, especially within automated, is clearly a huge problem. URL masking will continue to be a problem --  just like bots and invisible views have been -- if the dollars keep rolling in. Identifying the fraudulent platforms and sites facilitating URL masking can help stop a big chunk of the issue.