ComScore has acquired MdotLabs in a move aimed at battling fraud in online advertising, or as the company puts it, to “augment its non-human traffic detection methods.”
MdotLabs specifically uses its technology to identify bots, click farms, pay-per-view networks, and various other fake traffic generation techniques. Its methodologies for doing this include signal processing, statistics, machine learning, and applied math.
ComScore President and CEO Serge Matta said in a statement: “We are excited to welcome the MdotLabs team to comScore. 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.”
“We believe that the combination of Mdot’s technology with our existing NHT detection methods will deliver a significant advancement in addressing this important issue, providing even greater transparency and more accurate metrics around campaign performance,” he added.
Indeed the two will be integrated, and will allow for the reporting of a human-based metric, which comScore says minimizes the effects of non-human traffic.
“The MdotLabs team is thrilled to join comScore as we look to scale the value of our non-human traffic detection methods to a much greater footprint of clients,” said MdotLabs CEO and co-founder Timur Yarnall. “comScore sits at the center of the digital media buying and selling communities, and we believe our technology can play a big role in helping both sides mitigate the deleterious effects of NHT and bring confidence to those investing in digital.”
Yarnall as well as co-founder Dr. Paul Barford and the rest of MdotLabs will join comScore’s team. MdotLabs’ website already redirects to comscore.com.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Image via comScore