If you work in media, you should read the ANA / White Ops Fraud paper on bot-activity and online advertising fraud. There are many reason to why you absolutely have to read this report cover to cover, including:
- It clearly outlines new information about online advertising fraud
- It presents this information with the highest possible production quality
- It makes many actionable recommendations for tackling fraud
- It makes a crucial “call-to-arms” for the industry to follow
For anyone working in digital media, ignoring careful study of this landmark report could be considered as serious professional neglect. Not understanding clearly the information ANA and White Ops provide about client-side bots and online advertising fraud, will cost you or your clients millions or even billions of dollars over time. For the sell-side vendors this information is even more crucial, getting fraud wrong now could cost an exchange or a publisher its business later. Clearly the market is now starting to see fraud as the elephant in the room it has always been, and it will be increasingly difficult for anyone to pretend that we don’t have a problem.
How big this problem really, nobody knows. While ANA and White Ops talk about 20% and a number well below US$10bn, eMarketer talks about 39% and US$60bn. What we know for sure is that online ad fraud is big business. The below graphic from marketing.science does a great job in quantifying just how big.
Ad fraud against other crime
$60 billion is 39% of global digital ad spend ($154 billion, 2015 estimate; eMarketer, March 2014). “A third of traffic is bogus” (Wall Street Journal, March 2014).
I will provide a detailed commentary in this blog about the findings and ideas presented in the ANA / White Ops report.
You can download the report here.