Nefarious ad activity continues to dog marketers as perpetrators of ad fraud will cost them about $5.8 billion this year, per a report from the Association of American Advertisers (ANA). Confiant observed several trends for malicious or disruptive ads, including significant jumps in activity on three-day weekends. The company saw the biggest spike in malicious ads in Q1 over President's Day weekend in February.
Last month, Confiant attributed a jump in fraudulent activity to eGobbler, a threat first seen during Thanksgiving, that exploited a vulnerability in the Chrome for iOS mobile browser to redirect iPhone and iPad users to adware, scams and other malicious sites. The bug let malicious code hidden in online ads to break out of sandboxed iframes, a technology to load ad slots, and redirect a mobile user to another site or show a popup in front of a real site. EGobbler generated about 500 million impressions while trying to redirect iOS users to malicious sites, Confiant said. The company reported the bug to Google for a fix. EGobbler, VeryMal and ScamClub are the worst offenders in "malvertising" campaigns, according to Confiant.
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