As ad fraud becomes increasingly advanced, advertisers are expected to lose an estimated $7.2 billion globally this year, according to a new US-based study.
The research, carried out by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and White Ops, revealed a significant increase in bot percentages over the last year – varying from 3% to 37% per advertiser in 2015, compared with 2% to 22% the previous year.
Programmatic ad trading continues to flag up concern, with programmatic video ads found to have a massive 73% more bots than the study average, while programmatic display ads were 14% above average.
The ANA’s president and CEO, Bob Liodice, called the current level of criminal, non-human traffic a “travesty”.
“The staggering financial losses and the lack of real, tangible progress at mitigating fraud highlights the importance of the industry’s Trustworthy Accountability Group in fighting this war,” Liodice said.
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“It also underscores the need for the entire marketing ecosystem to manage their media investments with far greater discipline and control against a backdrop of increasingly sophisticated fraudsters.”
The results reflect data collected from 49 ANA member companies between 1 August and 30 September 2015 – including more than 10 billion online ad impressions across 1,300 campaigns.
Media with high CPMs were found to be more vulnerable to bots, as well as campaigns targeting certain demographics. Sourced traffic – any method by which publishers acquire more visitors through third parties – was over three times more likely to contain bots than unsourced traffic.
“The study highlights the challenges faced by the advertising ecosystem as defenders, and the many techniques that a sophisticated, persistent adversary can exploit within the online advertising industry,” said White Ops CEO Michael Tiffany.
“Although our study definitively demonstrates areas of improvement because parts of the industry have become laser-focused on continually tightening controls and adjusting transparency, we are still facing an uphill battle to achieve broad acceptance of the need for deeper focus on the fraud problem, and ultimately to reverse these financial trends.”
