Looks like advertisers have found a new way to earn money and draining the battery of your smartphone while doing so. This new ‘scam’ is said to be limited to Android smartphones, according to a report by Buzzfeed. These new-age ad videos are said hide behind banners and play without letting the users know about it. This not just generates more money for the advertisers but also consumes more battery of your handset.
The report states that the app developers are not the ones to be blamed in this. Instead, the advertisement network they signed are indeed be controlled by larger ad companies. The report talks about an ad company called OutStream Media which is a subsidiary of Aniview. However, Aniview says that it runs a self-service platform and is not be blamed.

This not just deals with your smartphone but is also harmful for app developers as they are unaware of it and tarnish the app’s reputation as well. “All I think about is them damaging the app’s reputation. It can cost money to [a user] and drain his battery. This is the thing that makes me really mad,” says the app developer to Buzzfeed.

The fraudsters essentially buy cheap ad banners and fill it with auto-playing videos to earn more. The app developer gets the small amount of what the banner ad gets in the process but the fraudsters earn more. Even the brands whose videos are shown hidden behind banners, are also the ones that lose money in the entire process.

The report adds that Aniview is in the process of legally shutting down.

On a related note, Google is soon said to bring a new feature to its Chrome browser that will prevent automatic downloads in the users browsers. “We plan to prevent downloads initiated from ad frames that lack a user gesture to prevent unwanted drive-by-downloads,” said developers on Chrome browser status page.

Source: gadgetsnow.com