Ad fraud – the quarter billion dollars we’re leaving on the table
Unless agencies can defeat ad fraud once and for all, Australian businesses are throwing a quarter of a billion dollars down the drain each year, argues Path 51 managing director Simon Larcey.
It’s a scary thought that of the $7.4 billion spent on digital ads in Australia in 2016, at least 4% is lost to ad fraud. That’s if the IAB’s ad fraud figures as they relate to display advertising can be applied more broadly to digital advertising in general. In my opinion – having looked at other markets around the world, where the figures are much larger – this is a conservative figure.
Take the USA, where the Association of National Advertisers estimate ad fraud in 2016 would cost more than $7 billion – as in, virtually our entire industry.
Sure, we’re a much smaller market here in Australia than the USA, but are we to believe we’re just that much better at detecting and avoiding ad fraud?
This problem is very real and is costing people TONS of money. I have been advertising for years and for a long time thought there was nothing I could do about it. Then last year at a PPC conference I learned about a company called ClickCease. They fight this fraud and save you tons of money. I am SOOO happy with ClickCease and believe anyone who is advertising use their system. They automatically block fraudulent IPs, click bots and click farms. With this software my ROI is up and my Adwords budget goes much farther. Try a free trial https://goo.gl/ed5Kzj and you will see results almost instantly.
While I’m 99% certain the above comment is spam, I see it has come from an IP address that has legitimately posted here once before, so Imma let you finish…
It is an affiliate link
I trialled this service, turns out it blocked actual customers most of the time.
Large website, lots of traffic, lots of filters. This is a cheap solution for small websites without scale.
I don’t think its a saving grace.
Advertisers themselves can contribute to the problem by making it a race to the bottom on prices and forcing that agency down a rabbit hole of low cpm exchange inventory, dirty ad networks etc
What we need is everybody in digital to be more accountable, and willing to dive into the data to assess the situation and make change.
Yes it sucks fraud is rampant, but there’s plenty we all could be doing to fix it.
It may mean a few less bucks get spent in digital for a while yet this will only strengthen digital years down the line once it has cleaned up.