FreeWheel Expands White Ops Relationship to Prevent Fraud

FreeWheel, Comcast’s ad tech company, said it has expanded its relationship with fraud prevention company White Ops, to protect advertisers from buying impressions created by bots.

The enhanced regime enables impressions bought programmatically passing through FreeWheel platforms to be verified as human before any transaction is made.

Ad inventory flows through the FreeWheel system at a rate of over one million ad decisions a second. All of it will be verified across all platforms, including fast-growing connected TV inventory.

Related: New FreeWheel System Unites Direct, Programmatic TV Buys

“As an industry connector of buyers and sellers, building trust and transparency across all parties is our number one priority. Premium video requires an extra level of inventory quality assurance, which is why this enhanced partnership is so important,” said Jon Whitticom, chief product officer at FreeWheel. “Our relationship with White Ops enhances our platforms to ensure that our clients can continue to detect, report on, and eliminate any fraud in their supply chain. FreeWheel is committed to ensuring clean inventory while also increasing the volume of transactable impressions. Combating fraud at a global scale, an on-going battle, is the ultimate win-win for both sides of the ecosystem.”

Bots are designed to look and act like humans, with user and device IDs, making it difficult to recognize. White Ops’ Advertising Integrity determines which impressions come from real humans while maintaining a high quality user experience for premium TV clients.

“FreeWheel has been an outstanding partner of ours for several years, and we’re looking forward to where our partnership will go in the future,” said Tamer Hassan, co-founder and CEO of White Ops. “Enabling Advertising Integrity’s pre-bid protection capabilities will solidify FreeWheel’s leadership among their partners as the industry leading provider of premium advertising management.”

White Ops currently verifies more than one trillion interactions per week, working directly with the largest internet platforms, DSPs and exchanges.

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.