Financial losses from ad fraud are finally hitting a slowdown, according to a report released Monday by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in collaboration with cybersecurity company White Ops.

The report anticipates ad fraud losses to total $5.8 billion globally in 2019 – an almost 11 percent drop from the $6.5 billion global loss reported in 2017. Ad fraud has reached a tipping point, with more ad fraud attempts projected to be thwarted than successful in 2019, the report said.

I don't know about you but $5.8bn might not sound a lot to these guys, but my guess is you could treble that number because these headlines are only the numbers that they 'think' they can audit. So why do brands still invest in a medium that's so open to click farm fraudsters?

From my experience it sits with the continued and out dated 'reach' and impressions (how many people saw this) mentality from brand and marketeers, in my opinion, only when the industry starts to pay on engagement as defined below will the message really start to hit home;

I read a recent article from 'Mark Shaefer' on Business Grow.

"To me, media engagement means a human interaction or conversation: a like, comment, conversation stream, or social share would be examples.

Posting a blog post, infographic, or video is not engagement. It's just another form of broadcasting". 

Which is a pretty accurate assessment in my book, because we can evidence some pretty awesome folks without those huge advertising budgets, or resources creating huge engagement across a number of social platforms.

So, once brands and companies who seem quite relaxed about this level of fraud which continues to eminate from an intrusive, overly commodotised industry that's in decline to wake up to 'engagement' as a key measure then 'I'm pretty sure the criminals who are getting away with this will go elsewhere.

Perhaps they might even start to take a serious look at the power of 'Social Media'?.

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.