*****The following article, by Clint Ethington, CEO & Co-Founder of Genius Monkey and appears as an online article in the Business section (Forbes CommunityVoice) on Forbes’ web site and was originally published on April 25, 2017.
Three Ways Marketers Can Prevent Today’s Ad Fraud
The measurement and tracking of today’s advertising results are susceptible to contamination, plagued by malicious fraudulent activity that’s created in various ways. Ideally, fraudulent ads would never be able to make their way into the marketplace. However, they do, and advertisers and agencies must go to great efforts to prevent their measurement results from being negatively affected by fraud.
But we don’t live in a perfect world, and not all participants are shouldering their respective load. In essence, this means that brands (or their digital marketing representatives) must take every measure in their wheelhouse to protect their clients and their ad budgets from the effects of malicious fraud.
The Various Forms Of Ad Fraud
Significantly contributing to ad fraud is bot traffic, which is at its highest levels ever. According to the Association of National Advertisers, more than $7 billion in advertising investment was wasted last year to these malicious bots.
“Here are some of the measures that could be incorporated for the protection and integrity of ads:
Incorporate the use of quality tools to entice quality traffic, as well as all network validation tools, trade desks, exchange levels and demand-side platforms. The integration of these analytics tools offered by zvelo..”
— Clint Ethington, CEO & Co-Founder of Genius Monkey
This ad fraud can occur in various ways. Let’s say, for example, that a blog owner wants to make money quickly. He or she can place bots that do a very good job of impersonating humans on the site. When the automated bots click on the ads that come across the screen, the blog owner makes money from the advertiser that thinks that it’s people doing the clicking.
Another method of creating mischievous bots is when publishers stack ad units on top of one another so that only the “top” impression is seen by the site visitors, yet all of the ads earn revenue. Malicious advertisers can shrink ad units down to the size of a single pixel and place hundreds of them on a page so that they will be paid for the impressions, even though no human would ever see them. And some bots can automatically redirect visitors to landing pages or other advertising content.
To assure that our clients are getting the full “bang” for their advertising buck, we make every effort possible to protect their programmatic advertising system from fraudulent activity, using third-party validation to stay abreast of looming threats.
How Can You Stop More Ad Fraud?
Here are some of the measures that could be incorporated for the protection and integrity of ads:
Incorporate the use of quality tools to entice quality traffic, as well as all network validation tools, trade desks, exchange levels and demand-side platforms. The integration of these analytics tools offered by zvelo, … Read more
