Google acquires Spider.io to weed out fraudulent ad interactions

21 Feb 2014

Internet search giant Google has purchased Spider.io, a web security start-up that deals primarily with online advertising fraud. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Google’s advertising subsidiary, DoubleClick, announced the acquisition on its blog.

DoubleClick is looking to use the London-based three-year-old company’s software in a sector that is continuously under attack from fraudulent groups and individuals who with inflate or deflate advert values.

Neal Mohan, vice-president of display advertising, wrote in the blog post that the company intends to immediately avail of Spider.io, particularly its work regarding video advertising.

“Our immediate priority is to include their fraud-detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts.

“Over the long term, our goal is to improve the metrics that advertisers and publishers use to determine the value of digital media and give all parties a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results. Also, 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.”

Google’s figures about the numbers of fraudulent advertising for 2013 show a startling number of what are known as the ‘bad ads’ on the internet.

According to its figures, last year alone, Google removed more than 350m bad ads from its systems, an increase from 220m in 2012.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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