As ad fraud continues to rise advertisers are constantly scratching around to find ways to ensure that the traffic that get reported is in fact 'genuine', and it's all based on a vanity metric called 'reach'..

So much so that in a piece of research from a couple of years ago (link below) we hear that advertisers were willing to pay even more if they can evidence that the traffic is from real people.

But isn't this just kicking the can further down the road?

Ad fraud is now forecast to rise to $100 Billion by 2023, and with circa $230 billion being spent on mobile advertising this year alone I'll let you do the madness of the math.

Another factor that drives the adoption of ad blocking software is concerns over privacy. Internet users aren’t necessarily happy about their personal data being collected, shared and used for targeted or personalised advertising. In fact an initiative by Mozilla called Track This was recently designed as an alternative to ad blockers, allowing users to pose as one of four different web personas to protect their own browsing information.

But increased data regulation is already changing how advertising uses personal information for targeting or personalisation. The enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation is causing a shift away from third-party data and requires EU users to opt into the use of their data for profiling and targeted advertising.

Major web browsers are already looking to pre-empt the data privacy (and potential fines) issues that are looming, as such they're now looking to strip out as many of those intrusive ads as they can and ensure that your browsing behaviour stays private. 

if your on iPhone then the Safari browser has been quietly helping you to do this for sometime, and now Google with the Chrome browser is following Firefox and creating its own set of rules that's going to make it harder for those Tsunami of ads to invade our browsing experience, and when that happens how will a brand know if those traffic stats provided by the agency are genuine, or coming from ad fraud bot farms?  

If you think that is an over exaggeration go and speak to 'Zuck' whose just had $5 Billion lifted from his company bank account for the recent data and privacy issues, along with the almost daily headlines that one company or another has been the subject of a data breach.

#turnoffadtech

There is an alternative way - to find out what that might be feel free to contact the author of this blog.

Enjoy the infographic in the link BTW.