‘More distrust in the marketplace’: Agency execs press pause on Forbes spend after domain spoofing report

Amid all of the concerns that the made-for-arbitrage (née made-for-advertising) crackdown would unfairly impact premium publishers, Forbes has been called out by a report by advertising transparency vendor Adalytics for intentionally operating an MFA subdomain for years, unbeknownst to the buy-side until this month.  

Four agency executives told Digiday that it’s still too early into investigations to determine how much of their clients’ budgets were spent on ads displayed on Forbes’ subdomain (www3.forbes.com). However, early examinations revealed as much as 4 to 5% of Forbes impressions per client or 25% of an agency’s total client base’s impressions from Forbes were tied to the subdomain.

Ultimately though, the total portion of a client’s budget spent on the subdomain isn’t the biggest concern amongst agency execs. The fact that their clients’ ads were being displayed on this subdomain for years, undetected by verification firms, DSPs, SSPs and even within the agencies themselves reveals that major gaps exist in programmatic reporting to detect domain spoofing. And even more concerningly, how widespread is this practice? 

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