Legitimate Interest Legal Grounds for Ad Fraud Logging
Legitimate interest grounds justify ad fraud logging under GDPR Article 6(1)(f) when servers mask IP addresses at ingestion and purge raw logs within 30 days.
Ad Fraud Logging
Meaning
Systemic recording of invalid or non-human interactions with digital advertisements provides the baseline data needed to contest discrepancies in billing. Programmatic buyers use ad fraud logging to identify bot traffic, click spams and domain spoofing before clearing payments. The log operates within the active ad server but terminates its tracing at the moment of payment settlement.
Technical Recording
Verification scripts running on the publisher page or inside the wrapper collect telemetry regarding user interaction events. These scripts populate the ad fraud logging system with browser headers, cursor movements and touch coordinates to prove non-human presence. Network routing data and click timestamps are gathered simultaneously.
Dispute Resolution
Reconciliation cycles between buy-side platforms and sell-side networks rely on the aggregate counts compiled by the verification software. When discrepancies between served impressions and logged clean impressions exceed the agreed tolerance, the buyer initiates a formal claim. This process demands that ad fraud logging outputs are shared in a structured format within ten days of the billing period close.
Commercial Remedy
Standard distribution agreements specify the financial consequences of non-compliance with quality thresholds. If the audit confirms that invalid traffic exceeds five percent of total volume, the vendor must issue a credit note for the contested amount. Standard ad fraud logging records protect the buyer from paying for unviewable inventory and establish a legal ground for termination of the insertion order.
Without this structured data, the buyer remains bound to the raw server logs of the publisher, which almost always overstate the genuine reach of the campaign.