The history of ad fraud is nearly as long as the history of digital advertising, and firms are finding themselves playing whack-a-mole with fraudsters. The latest fraud scheme is called verification stripping, a bot-driven phenomenon that enables fraudulent actors to strip the code used to verify impressions from assets in order to serve fake impressions or engage in domain spoofing. Ad fraud has nearly always been present in digital advertising, but the problem is growing and so is concern as more brands shift more money into digital. Kristin Lemkau, JPMorgan Chase’s chief marketing officer, said at a marketing conference earlier this year that advertisers will lose $16.4 billion in ad fraud in 2017, double what advertisers lost in 2016. The…