What was Methbot?
Methbot was a large video ad fraud operation exposed by White Ops (now HUMAN) in December 2016. It used data-center servers disguised as residential users, together with fake versions of premium publisher websites, to watch video ads automatically. White Ops estimated it earned $3 million to $5 million a day at its peak. Its organizers were later prosecuted in the US.
Methbot combined data center traffic (made to look residential by registering fake IP ownership records), headless browser-style automation and domain spoofing of well-known sites, so buyers thought their video ads were running on premium publishers. A successor scheme, 3ve, used a botnet of infected computers and was taken down in 2018 with help from Google, White Ops and law enforcement.
The US Department of Justice charged eight people; ringleader Aleksandr Zhukov was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to ten years. Methbot was a catalyst for ads.txt, which the IAB Tech Lab introduced in 2017 to let publishers declare their authorized sellers.