Google today announced that it has acquired Spider.io, a London-based cyber security firm that combats online advertising fraud. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Google said it would be using the startup’s detection system to improve its display and video ad services.
“By including Spider.io’s fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem,” Neal Mohan, Google’s vice president for display advertising said.
Online ad fraud is a huge problem, whereby advertizers pay for exposure and clicks on the Web that are actually powered by bots, networks of hijacked devices and other non-human traffic. Therefore, advertizers are paying large sums of money for impressions that won’t result in new customers.
With Spider.io, Google hopes to improve the accuracy of the information it gives advertizers, resulting in a “a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results.” We’ll have to wait and see.
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