Nigel Bridges, 11th May 2020Here at Beacon we’ve always been champions of openness and transparency in how we use big data and analytics. We’ve followed this through into our digital marketing intelligence and optimisation platform, Beacon, and in the launch of our Digital Marketing ROI Improvement Calculator.
Our data shows a sizeable portion of every digital marketing campaigns’ budget is either wasted entirely, or not spent effectively to various degrees, mostly through key areas including; bot traffic, fake clicks/ad fraud, and disengaged website visitors. Learn more about how Beacon is combatting ad fraud.
We’ve collected a few podcasts, articles and links which we think help to inform on some key issues, both factual and rumoured, which surround Ad Fraud in today’s marketplace.
Landmark Study Maps Ad Delivery From End to End
A landmark study from the ISBA (Incorporated Society of British Advertisers) – in association with the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and carried out by PwC – marks the first time that programmatic advertising supply chains (how advertisers and publishers are served by the programmatic ad delivery system) have been mapped from end-to-end, anywhere in the world.
https://www.isba.org.uk/news/time-for-change-and-transparency-in-programmatic-advertising/
Only 12% of Ad Impressions can be “matched”
The advertiser-funded Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Study found that only a fraction (12%) of 267 million ad impressions, paid for by brands to be served on publishers’ websites, could be accounted for or “matched”.
Got fraud detection in place? You are still not safe!
This Podcast with Dr Augustine Fou goes through some of the myths and misconceptions that marketers have about Ad Fraud including those about fraud detection. Be prepared to be surprised at the level of fraud:
https://www.alistdaily.com/lifestyle/augustine-fou-ad-fraud-myths
Ad fraud was predicted to hit $66 billion in 2018
Forbes Councils Member Asaf Greiner talks about the reality check of whether Ad Fraud is up or down in this article:
Money lost in 2019 could top $30 billion according to The Drum
The Drum, Europe’s biggest marketing website, is a frequent contributor to articles about Fraud in the ad industry and this piece highlighted the moment experts warned the total amount of money lost could top the $30 billion point:
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/06/06/cost-global-ad-fraud-could-top-30bn
Digital Metrics are inherently fake
This piece draws on a series of Tweets from Aram Zucker-Scharff about how the commonly used digital metrics are inherently fake, an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ if you will, and that adtech companies and marketing agencies know it – but are failing to act.
https://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/anger-over-fake-digital-marketing-metrics-boils-over/
Less than 60 percent of web traffic is human
This is also something which Max Read covered in a 2018 article for the New York Intelligencer which contains the staggering statistic that “less than 60 percent of web traffic is human”:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/how-much-of-the-internet-is-fake.html
70% of your marketing budget could be being lost to bots
Also leading to a claim that up to 70% of your marketing budget could be being lost to bots, written by SmartyAds CEO Ivan Guzenko in a piece for Entrepreneur:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/320315
2019 statistics of Ad Fraud round-up
For a full round-up of the 2019 statistics of Advertising Fraud, this piece from Business of Apps really drills down into the details:
https://www.businessofapps.com/ads/ad-fraud/research/ad-fraud-statistics/
The Chinese Click Farm Problem
Here’s a fun video about click farms in China and how they are changing from machines to humans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KG9nOPdOo
Ad-supported “news” sites with scraped content
In recent years, it’s become common for fraudsters to make ad-supported “news” sites with content scraped from legitimate publishers.
Discover how effective your marketing really is with our calculator
If you spend budget of digital advertising you are almost certainly losing more of it than you realise. If you want to discover if and how much you are losing to bots and Ad Fraud from your marketing budgets, then check out the Digital Marketing ROI Improvement Calculator.
It will provide you with honest, open data analytics that you can use to make informed spending choices for your ad budget.
