“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” 

John Wanamaker (1838-1922) was a very successful United States merchant, religious leader and political figure, considered by some to be a "pioneer in marketing”. He opened one of the first and most successful department stores in the United States, which grew to 16 stores and eventually became part of Macy’s.

He is credited with coining the phrase “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half”. - A quote I'm pretty sure has been heard by many in marketing over the years. 

'Juniper' research

suggest that ad fraud is set to rise to circa $100 Billion by 2023,  there are others  and myself who believe that even that is just the tip of a very large fraudulent iceberg, an iceberg that continues to help the ad industry implode in on itself.

Attracting the right people, converting them into leads, closing the sale and delighting the customer is about setting objectives, designing strategies and implementing scientific, measurable tactics that maximise goodwill, sales, revenue and profitability.

"This is all achieved through very intelligent, extremely cost effective digital techniques, advanced marketing automation, modern website technologies, social media, the convergence of inbound and outbound marketing and most importantly, encased in a solid depth of understanding of the principles of marketing".

Well, it would be if the adtech world hadn't opened itself up to all that fraud.

The forecast from Juniper also suggest that in what is still the wild west of digital advertising most of the increase in fraud will occur when ad tech and programmatic is fed into our Smart TV devices, which by the way is already happened........ 

Here's a few ideas that your in-house marketing team should be doing, not just handing it to the external media agency.

• Ask for line item details. If you only see aggregate numbers on a monthly or daily basis, you’re not going to see fraud as easily. For example, when an ad slot opens up, the site will announce it’s open for bidding, and the algorithms that represent ad buyers will bid, with someone winning. Win rates are usually about 10 percent. If you’re seeing win rates of 90 percent, something is wrong. Legitimate publishers can’t let every site win. Marketers can turn off that fraudulent website and not buy from it anymore.
• Examine bids won vs ad impressions served. For each bid won, an ad impression should be served. Look for discrepancies. Compare your DSP reports for bids won, by domain, to your ad server reports, by domain. Look for data discrepancies where the impressions served is far lower than the bids won, by domain. Identify domains that have greater than 10 percent discrepancy and study them further; then turn them off if you agree it is fraud.
• Look at your ad serving volume by hour. Be sure quantities on your ad server report are reported by hour, and look at whether all of the volume is spent in the first hour or during sleeping hours. If that’s taking place, you have no impressions left for the day and your budget is wasted.

 Or you could carry on as you are wasting circa 50% -75% of a budget that could help recruit or retain new employees, or even utilise it to further 'grow' your business.