Ad fraud is a growing problem. In a post ironically entitled “How Much Would you Pay For Ad Fraud?” Timothy Whitfield, Director of Technical Operations at GroupM, describes evidence of a $13B fraud problem that is not going away.
Consumers continue to shift their attention from desktop to mobile and connected devices, and ad dollars are quickly following. While ad fraud has been an ongoing challenge, most vendors have struggled to offer any fix for mobile & connected devices, and those who have tried offer elementary “solutions” that are capable of identifying only a fraction of fraudulent activities. In some cases, this is due to limited visibility into the process (only assessing install validity without click or impression data). In other cases it is simply limited vision.
Kochava is uniquely positioned to analyze a comprehensive dataset and has created a sophisticated and powerful toolset to identify every categorical fraud type down to the site ID level. This holistic solution also includes real-time abatement technology to filter bad traffic before it is attributed and syndicated to downstream partners.
“The ability to have data down to the timestamp and source of each user helps us to identify potential data discrepancies which, over the course of a campaign, can really add up. For example, if we are buying ads across a large ad inventory and we find in the data that we are receiving ad installs from a geography that we do not serve or did not specify, we can go back to our ad network and have them issue a credit or make good and then blocklist those outlets to avoid them in the future. With a neutral attribution partner like Kochava, it is easy to verify install claims made by ad networks to ensure that we are only paying for verified users.”
Advertisers have seen significant savings through eliminating problematic site IDs from their campaigns. However, by the time the advertiser is reviewing the data, the network has likely paid for the fraudulent traffic and is left holding the bag. Because of this, we have decided to offer networks access to the same data that advertisers are already consuming.
Email James Benoit for more information.
Still not convinced? Check out the excerpt below or read Whitfield’s entire article here.
How big a problem is Ad Fraud, today?
Circa 2.5% of the global digital advertising spend is wasted by Ad-Fraud. eMarketer estimates the total global media spend to be $542B USD. Click here for more info. Therefore, Ad-Fraud, as an industry, would represent a $13B USD problem!
Ad-Fraud is a problem that affects the whole internet, but there are some web sites that more affected than others. However, it doesn’t affect each web site equally.
The table above is a comparison of how much Ad-Fraud exists for the top publishers. In order to keep the list anonymous the order of the list and the names of the publishers have been purposefully obfuscated, so please respect the privacy of each vendor. However, as can be seen from the graph above it’s clear that Ad-Fraud addresses some vendors harder than others.
Excerpted from “How Much Would You Pay For Ad Fraud” by Timothy Whitfield
