{"id":102336,"date":"2016-07-02T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-02T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/ad-fraud-what-you-need-to-know-in-2016\/"},"modified":"2024-12-19T16:40:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T21:40:39","slug":"ad-fraud-what-you-need-to-know-in-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-gb\/insights\/blog\/paid-media\/ad-fraud-what-you-need-to-know-in-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Ad fraud: what you need to know in 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ad fraud is an issue that continues to plague the industry. According to research commissioned by the Association of National\u00a0Advertisers (ANA), advertisers will lose $7.2bn to bot fraud this year. That is up from $6.3bn in 2015. In June, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) issued a report warning that levels of ad fraud could potentially become so rife, that criminals could be extracting as much as $50bn of value out of the industry by 2020. The issue comes from networks of infected computers, known as botnets. They simulate human activity so it looks as though a person is viewing an ad. Fraudsters can either sell this bot-generated traffic to online publishers or place digital ads on websites that are mostly only viewed by bots. As the illustration below highlights, a December 2015 survey found ad fraud to be the second biggest issue concerning advertisers, with 47% of respondents citing it as the most critical problem within programmatic advertising.<\/p>\n

The rapid growth of programmatic advertising<\/strong><\/a>, particularly in areas such as mobile and video, is one of the reasons why ad fraud is becoming so prevalent. According to the ANA, programmatic attracts 73% more bots than direct buys. But in general, marketers are spending more on online advertising than ever before, and so fraud levels are bound to grow in line with that. While ad fraud is an issue most marketers are aware of, many remain unsure about what to do. The industry needs to come together to find a solution, but in the meantime, there are measures that can be put in place to help minimise the problem.<\/p>\n

Understanding \u2018viewability\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Are your ad impressions viewable and delivered to human traffic? That\u2019s the single most important question that marketers need to be able to answer. While \u2018fraud free\u2019 guarantees and verification vendors are out there, they\u2019re not necessarily to be trusted. Alternatively, private marketplaces enable brands to be more certain about what they’re getting, from a premium publisher, but this is a more expensive option and doesn\u2019t deliver the same in terms of reach. Ultimately, what marketers need to be doing is tracking their own ad views, via a third party tool. Of course, what goes hand-in-hand with this issue, creating an additional problem, is ad blocking. It\u2019s therefore critical that businesses bring in specific expertise in programmatic, for the role to be carried out effectively. Accessing the specific expertise of independent agencies or consultants can also help to provide a further safeguard against fraud.<\/p>\n

What the industry is doing<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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