ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space.

This week ExchangeWire recounts how Rocket Fuel became embroiled in a high-profile click fraud row, Rubicon Project and InMobi paired to launch a mobile native ad exchange to rival Google and Twitter, as well as European ad tech firms stepping up their operations.

Bot traffic debate goes mainstream
An FT article documenting the amount of bot traffic on a recent Mercedes-Benz campaign reignited the controversy around click fraud, with said piece appearing to point the finger at Rocket Fuel, with the ad tech firm responding in kind by labelling the piece “sensational”.

The FT article, published earlier this week, ran with the headline: “Mercedes online ads viewed more by fraudster robots than humans”, and claimed that Rocket Fuel inadvertently served ads on fraudulent websites as part of the campaign, over half (57%) of the campaign ads were “viewed” by automated computer programmes (or bots), rather than real people.

However, the ad tech company come out strongly issuing a statement that dismissed the piece as “sensational”, adding: “Bots are a real problem, but less so than sensational headlines on top of non-news.”

Rocket Fuel went on to contextualise the claims pointing out that: “In February of 2014, when the Financial Times suggests that we delivered approximately 200,000 impressions to bots, we rejected 497,827,451,520 [bot] impressions while evaluating approximately 1.1 trillion impressions for our customers’ ads.”

Rocket Fuel went on to highlight its proactive attempts to negate the activities of “scammers” in the “arms race” between them and legitimate players in the ad tech sector, highlighting its recent announcement that it will release a free bot-detection tool to further help advertisers keep bots out of their results.

This publication has been vocal in its assertion that “fake clicks” are rampant within the online ad tech sector, and the piece prompted much debate on various social media pieces, and also prompted Jalal Nasir, CEO of online advertising transparency firm Pixalate to pen a comprehensive guide to the techniques of such fraudsters.

Ad tech players herald the ‘big three’ of mobile
Rubicon Project and InMobi this week announced they were partnering to launch the InMobi Exchange that will make mobile native ad units available on a scale that will make it the ‘third-largest’ such platform behind Google and Twitter’s respective offering, according to the pair.

The pair have issued a statement claiming it is the largest “mobile-first programmatic exchange” , adding that InMobi Exchange aggregates “hundreds of buying platforms”, across 30,000 apps, with a reach of over 759 million monthly users, with inventory made available via real-time bidding (RTB).

In particular, the pair hope that InMobi’s extensive presence in developing markets (InMobi is India-based), will prove a point of difference among the ‘big three’ mobile exchanges.

InMobi Exchange will also let buyers segment audience data via its Audience Personas platform, with both Rubicon Project and InMobi claiming mobile ads deliver five-times higher yield for publishers and application developers and six-times greater conversions for buyers over traditional banner ads.

There have been several launches of native mobile ad exchanges this year by companies in the ad tech sector with Twitter, Facebook and OpenEx launching their offerings earlier in the year, with this publication announcing its own analysis of the trend at this year’s Mobile World Congress.

Ilicco Elia, head of mobile at Digitas LBi, told this title that finding formats that won’t annoy users – and also provide scale – within premium publishers' environments was a challenge, hence the announcement of InMobi Exchange, and Twitter’s MoPub MarketPlace appears to answer this call.

InMobi and Rubicon Project’s announcement also highlights that they are both working within the IAB’s OpenRTB Working Group on looking to standardise native programmatic buying, a development this title will watch with interest.

European ad tech firms step up, sell out
Big news in the European ad tech scene this week, with Holland-based YDs rebranding as Yieldr, and announcing the opening of an office in Barcelona, as it attempts to ramp-up its operation, meanwhile Yieldr’s compatriot Distimo announced it was acquired by App Annie.

The newly-monikered Yieldr has decided to rebrand at this juncture, as the company attempts to ramp-up its operations, a move signified by the opening of its office in Barcelona, which will house a commercial team serving eight markets, as well as a team of developers.

To lead the charge, Yieldr has drafted in ex Facebook and Yahoo executive Natalie Livingstone (pictured) who will serve as VP, central sales, and relocate to Barcelona, where the development of upcoming mobile and “revenue management” products will take place.

Livingstone, who previously helped build a sales team based in Barcelona for Yahoo with Yieldr CEO Tom Triscari, told this publication the decision to rebrand was a reflection of its ambitions to “move to a new level of growth”.

Yieldr recently secured €4.6m in a series-A funding from Partech and Active Venture Partners, and now intends to use this injection of funding to fuel its growth in terms of both its footprint, as well as its product offering, including licensing its platform to traditional media-buying agencies using a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

She also said the decision to open an office in Barcelona was jointly driven by the city administration’s assistance to foreign companies investing in the region, plus Yieldr is placing its bets that the Catalan capital’s unique culture, and lifestyle will attract (as well as retain) the breed of talent necessary to achieve the outfit’s desired growth.

Conversely, this week also saw the sale of Holland-based mobile app analytics firm Distimo to US ‘rival’ App Annie, with it appearing likely that the Distimo brand will be folded into its new paymaster. A blog post announcing the sale penned by Vincent Hoogsteder, Distimo, CEO, reads:

“We’re going to be working closely with the App Annie team to integrate and merge all our best features into the App Annie platform. When this is complete, we will start a smooth migration process so that all of the data you hold with Distimo is seamlessly accessible on App Annie.”