Exploring the dynamics of search advertiser fraud

Joe DeBlasio, Saikat Guha, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Alex C. Snoeren

Abstract: Most search engines generate significant revenue through search advertising, wherein advertisements are served alongside traditional search results. These advertisements are attractive to advertisers because ads can be targeted and prominently presented to users at the exact moment that the user is searching for relevant topics. Deceptive advertising is harmful to all legitimate actors in the search ad ecosystem: Users are less likely to find what they are looking for and may lose trust in ads or the search engine, advertisers lose potential revenue and face unfair competition from advertisers who are not playing by the rules, and the search engine's ecosystem suffers when both users and advertisers are unhappy. This paper explores search advertiser fraud on Microsoft's Bing search engine platform. We characterize three areas: the scale of search advertiser fraud, the targeting and bidding behavior of fraudulent advertisers, and how fraudulent advertisers impact other advertisers in the ecosystem.