中文摘要
广告欺诈日益成为在线广告领域的一大隐忧,而发布商是欺诈性广告流量的关键来源之一。尽管无论从技术还是经济角度来看,广告欺诈威慑都是一个关键问题,但以往的研究并未考虑二者的相互作用。本文通过构建一个博弈论模型填补了这一关键空白:在该模型中,广告网络(发布商与广告主之间的中介)战略性地运用其技术工具(特定欺诈检测技术的配置)和经济工具(向发布商支付的报酬),以有效威慑广告欺诈并实现利润最大化。我们的分析得出了若干有趣的发现。例如,我们证明,随着欺诈检测技术和欺诈生成技术的改进,尽管广告网络需要通过收紧技术配置来抑制欺诈动机并减少准入的广告流量,但有时却可能需要提高支付。此外,尽管许多利益相关方主张通过严格的立法和政策来减少恶意发布商,但我们证明,这种做法有时可能无法减少欺诈流量,甚至会损害广告网络的利润。另外,我们的结果还提供了其他有益启示,为广告欺诈生成与检测中的激励问题提供了一个新的理论视角。我们的研究也为广告网络实施有效的广告欺诈威慑政策,以及广告主审计和监控其广告活动效果提供了有价值的洞见。本文由 Hemant Bhargava 接收,所属领域为信息系统。资助:S. Kumar 感谢 Temple 国际商务教育研究中心对本研究的部分支持。补充材料:在线附录可在 https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02201 获取。
Abstract
Ad fraud is increasingly becoming a major concern in online advertising, with publishers being one of the key sources of fraudulent ad traffic. Although ad fraud deterrence is a critical problem from both technical and economic perspectives, past research has not considered their interplay. Our paper fills this critical gap by building a game-theoretic model wherein an ad network (an intermediary between publishers and advertisers) strategically leverages its technological tool (the configuration of a given fraud detection technology) and economic tool (the payment to publishers) to deter ad fraud and maximize profits effectively. Our analysis generates several interesting findings. For example, as the fraud detection technology and fraud generation techniques improve, we show that although the ad network needs to respond by making the technology configuration stricter to dampen fraud motives and admit less ad traffic, it may sometimes need to increase the payment. Furthermore, although many stakeholders advocate instituting strict legislation and policies to reduce malicious publishers, we show that this may sometimes fail to reduce fraud traffic and even hurt an ad network’s profit. In addition, our results provide other useful implications that present a new theoretical perspective on the incentive problems in ad fraud generation and detection. Our study also draws valuable insights for ad networks into implementing effective ad fraud deterrence policies and for advertisers to audit and monitor their ad campaign performance. This paper was accepted by Hemant Bhargava, information systems. Funding: S. Kumar thanks the Temple Center for International Business Education and Research for partially supporting this research. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02201 .