Did you know that the global costs associated with digital advertising fraud are expected to rise from USD 88billion to USD 172 billion between 2023 and 2028? That is an annual increase of around 14 percent und also means that the figure will nearly double in the presented period. As an advertiser, you therefore do not have to look too deeply into the crystal ball to find out whether ad fraud is or is not going to be a serious problem for you at some point in the future.
You only need to ask yourself one question: Is programmatic advertising part of your marketing strategy? And if it is, then the answer is: "Yes, you have to deal with ad fraud.”
In fact it is one if not THE biggest silent threat to marketers (and also publishers) worldwide.
So what constitutes ad fraud?
Ad fraud encompasses various forms of deceit in online advertising from click bots to cookie stuffing with the most common being the following:
Click fraud: Artificially generating ad clicks using automated software or paid individuals, such as "click farms," to inflate interaction numbers and increase costs for advertisers.
Ad stacking: Layering multiple ads on top of each other, with only the top ad visible, while attributing every click to all ads to profit from multiple advertisers simultaneously.
Domain spoofing: Misrepresenting a website as a reputable and high-ranking site to sell ads at inflated prices.
Impression fraud: Displaying ads on hidden or irrelevant websites, rendering them invisible or ineffective for the intended target audience, yet still counting them as "displayed."
Not only does all of this result in marketers paying for advertising that doesn't do them any good, it also causes their ROI to deteriorate, their marketing budgets to be wasted, the results of their digital campaigns to fail and, in the worst case scenario, even causes reputational damage to their brand.
But while fraudsters are constantly developing new methods to attack the digital advertising economy and ad fraud may seem like an overwhelming problem, there luckily is a bunch of proactive steps you can take to protect your brand and your ad budget.
Tips to prevent ad fraud and tackle this challenge
There’s no silver bullet for ad fraud! What’s most important is that advertisers work proactively to detect ad fraud as soon as possible and when it comes to doing so you should first and foremost take the following general rules into account:
Stay vigilant for suspicious activities within your ad campaigns, such as unusually high click-through rates or sudden spikes in campaign traffic, which may indicate fraudulent behavior. To put it as simple as possible: Always question your metrics – and question anomalies. For example: If the click data in your DSP is telling you that 90% of your clicks are from a country or region your ads aren’t targeting, that should be a big red flag to you.
Use ads.txt, rely on sellers.json and IP blacklists. This means: Check on publishers ads.txt files to specify the authorized ad networks, exchanges, and supply side platforms permitted to resell ad content. Additionally, verify if your monetization partners maintain a valid sellers.json file if they are intermediaries. This file allows advertisers to authenticate the source of the ad space and impressions they intend to purchase. And last but not least: Set up an IP blacklist. As soon as you receive suspicious clicks, blacklist the relevant IP addresses from viewing your ads in future.
Utilize machine learning technologies to detect fraud more efficiently. Use these tools to protect your programmatic ads from fraudulent activity. They can help you to identify unreal clicks, traffic, and conversions, providing real-time notifications to alert you of potential issues. For example: Google Analytics allows you to create custom alerts based on sessions, page views and some other metrics. Ad verification tools ensure your ads are placed on relevant content and seen by real people in the right geolocation. Bot detection solutions identify and block non-human traffic. And ad fraud detection tools check fake clicks and views by monitoring your ads.
Do your homework and expand your knowledge on ad fraud by engaging with industry organizations and their publications. They play a vital role in establishing standards, educating stakeholders and keeping them informed about the latest developments in digital advertising. Also don’t forget to educate your team about ad fraud risks and prevention strategies.
Collaborate with the right partners to reduce your risk. Know your traffic sources and work with reliable publishers to minimize the fraudulent traffic risk. Conduct thorough research on potential ad tech partners to ensure they can effectively support your fraud prevention objectives. Some of them have special knowhow in monitoring traffic quality, as well as in combatting ad fraud. Find such a partner and work closely with it.
To sum up: Programmatic ad fraud never stops. It’s an ongoing battle that will remain a challenge to the whole industry. Nevertheless: If you are an advertiser that understands how programmatic ad fraud works, what it can cause und how you can prevent it, that’s already half of the battle. And by staying alert, using advanced tools and relying on good partners you are doing everything you can!
And just in case it wasn't already clear: ConnectAd is one of these premium partners. We are all about transparency.We do check on all kinds of invalid traffic all the time! We take care of invalid traffic detection as well as ad verification by default and make sure that advertisers find themselves in a save environment and users you will only get creatives that fit the highest standards. Why? Because we hate bad advertising.
