Bots, click farms, pay-per-view networks and a growing list of traffic generation techniques will be more easily identified by analytics company comScore now that it has purchased MdotLabs for an undisclosed fee.
Non-human traffic is becoming more of a problem for the ad industry and comScore hopes that it will be easier to weed out using MdotLabs’ signal processing, statistics, machine learning and applied mathematics.
Digital media campaigns can often include a sizable chunk of malicious impressions, according to comScore president and CEO Serge Matta, who is pleased to have MdotLab’s expertise to call on.
“The outstanding team of engineers and data scientists at MdotLabs has been at the forefront of developing the highly sophisticated techniques for identifying and rooting out the waste associated with non-human traffic, which can often run in excess of 50 percent on a given campaign.”
MdotLabs will complement comScore’s own methods of removing any nefarious traffic as improvements are made to the accuracy of comScore’s digital audiences and advertising products MMX and validated Campaign Essentials.
Dr. Paul Barford and Timur Yarnall, MdotLabs’ co-founders, and the rest of the team from the tech firm will join comScore as part of the acquisition.