For those of us in the digital advertising space, bots are a familiar and always evolving, challenge. They can engage in convincingly human-like behavior (clicking on ads, playing videos, performing searches, and on and on), and for that reason are a favorite tool of fraudsters seeking to mislead marketers, publishers, and agencies about the real impact of their ads. IAS offers a range of solutions that help identify these malevolent bots, spotting when online behavior is not that of a human, and helping advertisers avoid the corruption of their metrics by such deception.

But what if the bot is a human? No, we’re not talking about some dystopian, Terminator-like scenario in which the line between human and android becomes blurry. Rather, it’s a case of humans being rewarded for taking bot-like actions — and it’s a fast-growing concern for our industry.