Google Acquires Spider.io to Help Continue Battle Against Fraudulent Advertising

Over the past couple of months, Google's made it super-clear that it takes advertising from all angles very seriously. On the "bad ad" front, the company made its New Years' resolution to crack down on bad (eg: scammy) ads public last month, and a mere day later, reports came out that it had removed two Google Chrome extensions from its app store for serving unexpected ads to its users.

Believe it or not, though, it's not only the viewer that needs to be protected; sometimes, the advertiser themselves do, too. When a company decides to spend money on advertising, it wants the assurance that, at the very least, the ads are going to be seen. That doesn't mean that the ads need to be front row and center on your screen; rather, they can't be displayed in a fraudulent way, such as out-of-view but still loaded in code to add a +1 to its overall impression count - something more common than you might imagine.

To better fight against this, Google has just snatched up 3-year-old company Spider.io, which specializes in fighting against fraudulent ads. In particular, its technology can sort human visitors from bots, but most importantly, bots masquerading as humans. With the acquisition, the official Spider.io website no longer has any content; instead it just offers a link to Google's official post on the acquisition.

As noted in the announcement, Google's immediate priority is to begin integrating Spider.io's technology into its video and display ad products, and as a side-effect of the integration, those who either advertise through Google or act as a publisher will be treated to even more accurate statistics - important in the competitive advertising battlefield.