A group of leading agencies and measurement companies recently came together to develop a shared set of principles intended to strengthen the fight against influencer fraud.  The Bot Fraud Prevention Council Principles raise the bar for how digital advertisers operate and will ultimately make the digital ad ecosystem safer.  TAG looks forward to working with the TAG Community in the Business Transparency Committee and Anti-Fraud Working Group to incorporate these principles into TAG’s existing certification programs and information-sharing tools.  This will ultimately ensure that the broader industry has the right tools to fight influencer fraud throughout the digital ad supply chain.

Influential Forms Bot Fraud Prevention Council Alongside OMD, WME, Oracle Data Cloud, and IRI 

AI-Powered Social Intelligence Firm Chooses Charter Council Members to take a Proactive Stance against Bot Fraud

LAS VEGAS, NV, JANUARY 9, 2019 – Today, Influential, a leading AI influencer technology, Social Intelligence firm and IBM “With Watson” partner, announced the founding of the Bot Fraud Prevention Council (BFPC),  bringing together some of the industry’s most respected companies to take a firm stance against bot fraud and the negative effects that it brings to the advertising and marketing ecosystem.

The goal of the BFPC is to provide advanced identification, reporting and removal of bot accounts and engagement from marketing campaigns and social media platforms. The sharing of methodology, technology, and resources to protect brands, talent agencies and ad agencies from fraud is the primary objective of the BFPC. The council’s first charter members include industry leading organizations OMD, a global media agency; WME, a leading entertainment agency; Oracle Data Cloud, which owns the Moat Measurement solution; IRI, a market research and media measurement company, and Lucidity, a blockchain technology that delivers real time transparent measurement to combat fraud and improve performance.

 “We’re working toward setting the standards for what all marketers should expect from advertising platforms and vendors, when evaluating a campaign in its entirety,” said Ryan Detert, CEO of Influential.  “We’re incredibly pleased that we’re not alone in the fight against bot fraud, and our amazing charter members all bring unique capabilities and domain expertise to the table, which will help this council make substantial change throughout the industry.”

To create the BFPC, Influential and its charter members turned to Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), a first-of-its-kind cross-industry accountability program, as the forum for helping to broaden out the BFPC’s important work. “Bot Fraud is an important issue that compromises the integrity of the entire digital media industry,” said Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG. “TAG has been actively working to combat this problem for several years and we are thrilled to see a group come together to specifically address the fraud that can exist in the influencer marketing ecosystem.”

The guiding principles behind the BFPC are as follows:

- Council members will only work with known and trustworthy partners
- The council will aim to identify and remove any non-human activity on social platforms
- Create more transparency for marketers to have greater effectiveness in their influencer campaigns
- Create a central hub where reporting and methodologies can be continually shared and improved upon

According to a recent report, bots create about half of internet traffic across all websites, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) estimates online ad fraud costs advertisers $8.2 billion annually. The objective of the BFPC is to empower the digital media industry with transparent, valid, and effective bot fraud prevention and detection solutions. Ushering in 2019, the council is set on developing solutions to significantly lower bot fraud occurrences and its effect on marketing campaigns, across all mediums and platforms.

“Bot fraud is an issue that can be kept at bay, so long as businesses and technology work together in order to provide tangible solutions. OMD created a product called the iScore last year in partnership with Influential that addressed this rampant issue and we are excited to be taking the next step in combating bot fraud,” said Kerry Perse, Managing Director at OMD.

The council will hold regular monthly calls and quarterly meetings to discuss best practices, methodologies and new solutions that can help solve fraudulent incidents across the council’s combined client rosters. There will also be a shared central hub of information available transparently to all members of the BFPC and members of TAG. Members of the BFPC will also organize and participate in panels at major tentpole advertising industry events throughout the year. The BFPC will launch with a panel of its charter members at Brand Innovators’ Mega-Trends event at CES.

About Influential

Influential is an AI social data and conversion technology, as well as a “With Watson” partner of IBM Watson and a Facebook Marketing Partner. Utilizing a network of over 300,000 social media influencers as a tactic for distribution, Influential runs both native and paid campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube for Fortune 500 brands including Walmart, McDonald’s, Pepsi, Nestlé, General Mills, Toyota, Samsung, Sony Pictures and many more. Influential is the only company that can track deterministic one-to-one in-store foot traffic and sales attribution from paid influencer posts, as well as TV tune-in lift and attribution. Influential is a strategic partner of WME and Oracle Data Cloud and has offices in Beverly Hills, New York City, and Las Vegas. (www.influential.co)

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