Dive Brief:

• Advertisers seeking higher viewability standards -- like those put in place by Media Rating Council -- may be inadvertently helping drive fraudulent activity like bot traffic, according to online ad experts interview by the Wall St. Journal. 
• Bogus websites that are built solely to drive bot traffic and collect ad revenue can game viewability standards by placing ads in highly visible areas. 
• The high visibility of the ads can receive a high viewability score from third party tracking systems, resulting in more ad placements and increased ad value from ad networks -- even though it's fraudulent.

Dive Insight: 

Advertisers seeking higher viewability standards may want to rethink their approach. Initially conceived as a way to reduce fraudulent traffic, higher viewability standards can have the unintended consequence of driving more fraudulent traffic. That's partly because legitimate publisher won't necessarily push aside editorial content to raise the viewability ratings of its ads. Fraudulent website have no such qualms; they can put their ads directly in the viewer's line of sight to gain a high viewability score.