Forbes: How To Buy Digital Media And Minimize Ad Fraud

Dr. Augustine Fou Contributor

 

Recent stats show that digital advertising hit $140 billion in 2020 in the U.S. It is well known that there’s a large amount of digital ad fraud, although the exact amount is disputed, ranging from 1% to 100%. It is also well known that the largest brand advertisers love buying vast quantities of ads, at low CPM prices, with the appearance of high “performance.” They choose to ignore the fact that the vast quantities, low prices, and high clicks are only possible from fake sites and apps with fake users — bots (automated software) that load ads and click on them. There’s not enough humans on earth to generate the 500 trillion ad opportunities per year; but that’s trivial for vast botnets, like the ones previously used for DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. 

If a marketer genuinely cared about driving real business outcomes with digital marketing, like small and medium businesses, how can they buy digital media while minimizing their exposure to ad fraud? Keep in mind that these small businesses can’t afford any fraud detection technologies. But as you will see below, those detection technologies are not necessary if you know how to buy digital media while minimizing fraud in the first place.

What follows are broad-stroke recommendations. Of course there are exceptions and nuances, but these are meant to provide starting points for digital ad buyers who want to do more themselves, to minimize fraud and maximize business outcomes.

Start with strict include-lists

If you buy ads through programmatic channels, and that includes buying through Google Ads, the best way to avoid 99% of the fraud is to start with very strict include lists. What does “strict” mean?

 

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