Programmatic ad fraud (also referred to as ‘invalid traffic’), is the practice of fraudulently representing online ad impressions, clicks, conversions or data events in order to generate revenue, preventing the proper delivery of digital ads to the intended audience.
Most commonly taking the form of bots, or domain spoofing, ad fraud gets ahead by syphoning money from advertising transactions. It can come in different forms: falsely disguising low quality data inventory as high quality or pretending to be humans browsing the internet, thus generating fake traffic and preventing genuine organic clicks/impressions.
Detection:
- No performance. The lack of performance, (whether it’s sales conversions or another business outcome) is the most concrete warning sign of ad fraud.
- Data centre IP addresses. One indication is that the ‘visitor’ to your page is originating from a hosted server and not a residential or corporate computer. Producing such proof will often lead you to receiving a refund from your ad-buying platform.
- Abnormally high CTR’s (Click through Rates). Such high numbers are unrealistic and should be a reason to investigate further.
Conclusion
In order to make digital campaigns successful, marketers should ensure their ad spend is being used to reach actual people.
Regardless of whether we like it or not, it’s a fact that ad fraud does exist in the digital ecosystem, and not all campaigns are being seen by humans.