Impact Radius acquires ad fraud prevention firm Forensiq

Dive Brief:

Digital marketing and affiliate solutions company Impact Radius acquired ad fraud prevention firm Forensiq.
The deal will result in the creation of a marketing platform with native ad-fraud protection.
The move follows on a $30 million fundraising round by Impact Radius led by Silversmith Partners earlier this month.

Dive Insight:

Ad fraud is a pervasive problem in the advertising industry, with the Association of National Advertisers estimating that advertisers will lose $7.2 billion to fraudulent bot impressions in 2016. Even the biggest players are not immune from the problem: Facebook announced in March that it was shutting down the demand-side ad buying platform it had been testing through its ad server Atlas after discovering "many bad ads and fraud (like bots)" and being "amazed by the volume of valueless inventory."

As the industry looks to clamp down on fraudulent views, Forensic and Impact Radius are hoping their fraud detection technology will help give marketers clean data and focus on reaching consumers, instead of actively fighting fraud.

Impact Radius CEO Per Pettersen told Marketing Dive that the first wave of marketing SaaS was full of fragmented solutions, but that the future is an integrated platform solving multiple challenges such as ad fraud, viewability, brand safety, and consumer journey analytics.

“CMOs are going to demand marketing analytics platforms that give them trusted insights, free of fraudulent data points from non-human traffic, and scientifically valid attribution models that do not factor in these data points,” he said.

“Through this partnership, we can not only look at engagement but track it down the conversion," David Sendroff, founder and CEO of Forensiq, told Marketing Dive about the deal. "This allows us to measure true impact in terms of revenue from consumers, instead of more opaque metrics like in-view time. Now we will be able to ensure data quality and integrity throughout the entire funnel. Data science will allow our customers to understand how to reach the most relevant consumers.”