There are several techniques for identifying what has become the scourge of the internet for advertisers – code that fires up web pages just to ensure ads are displayed for which a buyer must pay.

Now online ad tech vendor OpenX is trying a twist on fraud detection, with a third-generation iteration to its so-called “Traffic Quality Platform”.

“Historically, the approach has been to gather large amounts of data and then look for anomalous patterns,” market quality VP John Murphy. tells Beet.TV in this video interview.

“That big data approach is somewhat limited, and breaks down when the majority of fraud starts coming from botnets. Rather than seeing the fire, you’re seeing the smoke. For that you need to be in the browser itself.

“We’ve taken advantage of the direct integrations we have with publishers – code directly on their page – to push these fraud detection techniques in to the browser.” That way, Murphy says, OpenX can detect fraudulent ad calls “before the request ever comes in to the (ad) exchange”.

Find the company press release here.