If someone got access to your company bank account, then consistently stole 50% of the cash you kept putting in their would you be happy, and just accept that its just part of doing business?.

Of course you wouldn't, apart from the probability it could put you and your employees out of business its downright criminal, and you would demand accountability, especially from your CMO.

In recent months we have seen varying reports from 3 companies (more are available) about the level of ad fraud, one in May 2019 from anti-fraud vendor White Ops and advertising trade group the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) suggests that fewer dollars will be lost to ad fraud this year: After analyzing 27 billion ad impressions across 50 brand marketers, they estimated that $5.8 billion will be lost globally this year, down from the $6.5 billion lost in 2017.

But Juniper Research that same month said that advertisers will lose $42 billion of ad spend this year across online, mobile and in-app channels, almost nine times larger than White Ops/ANA figures. Given the estimates of the size of programmatic ad spend this year—about $84 billion worldwide, according to Zenith—Juniper’s estimate represents about half of programmatic display dollars going to fraud.


The former (White Ops) being aligned to the industry that puts food on their table, and the other being the industry body (ANA) so no surprise that collectively its in their interest to down play the size of the problem, with White Ops having a vested interest in both camps

The latter being a company who is genuinely interested in trying to provide some degree of openness in relation to the biggest blight happening not just in ad land, but directly from our digital marketing budgets. 

Juniper have their own forecast, and they're predicting ad fraud will continue to climb in excess of $100 billion by 2023.

The reality is, no one really knows how big the problem is because of all the different vendors, data points, and channels, which will now include intrusive programmatic shitty adverts on your Smart TV and Set Top Box, and at times it seems no one really cares.

Having been around in marketing for sometime it sickens me to think that the whole industry know there is a problem, but the spend continues, this is an industry that can also see the decline in the media marketing landscape, and this decline isn't being driven by fraud, its actually being driven by ad skipping, ad blocking, and good old GDPR and related data/privacy concerns from you and me.

There are very few places left for brands who want our attention to go to if this epidemic of widespread fraud is to be diluted, but 'Social Media' can be a life saver for brands if they understand that social media is about being social first, and selling second.

The cost don't increase because being social means you measure 'engagement' over reach, you don't need a database, so no GDPR issues, if you operate and 'employee advocacy' strategy your outsourced 'social agency' could pretty much become redundant.

There is an alternative way.......

We are active 'practitioners' of what we do, we already know and can evidence the ROI of a robust and internally aligned 'Social' strategy.

Part of that evidence it that you are reading this blog, just like many others - including your competitor!

We also don't do outbound pushy, salesy marketing, so if you would like to explore more, please contact the author of this blog.