Deploying ad fraud software is one guaranteed way of fighting the current trend of falling advertising budgets.

Average marketing budgets have fallen to 7.7% of overall company revenue, down from 9.1% in 2023, according to Gartner’s survey of 395 CMOs and marketing leaders. 

The annual Gartner 2024 CMO Spend Survey was conducted between February and March, respondents included CMOs and marketing leaders in North America, Northern and Western Europe, across 10 different industries, company sizes and revenue. The vast majority of respondents reported median annual revenue of more than $5.3 billion.  

Experts revealed the findings during the Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo in London.  

“CMOs are living in an ‘era of less’,” said Ewan McIntyre, VP Analyst and the Chief of Research for the Gartner Marketing Practice.  

“In the four years preceding the pandemic, average marketing budgets were 11% of overall revenue. In the four years since, they’ve dropped to an anaemic 8.2%.” 

While paid media investments grew to 27.9% of budget in 2024, spending fell across martech, labour and agencies. Technology investments continued their downward trend, reaching the lowest level for a decade. 

However, McIntyre said the drop in martech investment didn’t signal a dulled appetite for technology, more that it reflected CMOs diminishing influence over martech as other departments like IT, took more control. 

Fraud impacts your brand ROAS 

Fraud impacts on your digital advertising, giving you unreliable data and skewing your analytics, leading to a reduction in ROAS.  

According to The Global Cost of Ad Fraud: 2023-2028 report by Juniper Research, 22% of all ad spend was lost to fraud in 2023. The report analysed more than 78,000 datasets of digital ad activity to discover the scale of the problem from 48 countries and across eight regions. 

Bots can account for a substantial portion of all traffic from paid digital ads (PPC and promoted social posts), often up to 30% and, in some cases, in excess of 60%. When this is combined with wasted ad spend from fake clicks or interactions by bots, the scale of the effect on ROAS is clear. 

Leveraging innovations like AI and machine learning (ML) to create and sustain business value, in combination with a better understanding of how malicious bots operate, is a necessary step for anyone spending money on advertising. 

CMOs ‘believe’ GenAI may save the day 

“Despite financial challenges, the majority of CMOs believe AI may save the day,” said McIntyre.  

“Sixty-four percent of CMOs say they lack the budget to execute their 2024 strategy, but GenAI offers the opportunity to grow the marketing function’s impact far beyond its budgetary constraints.” 

However, GenAI also comes with plenty of inherent risks. There are major issues around the ethics of its use, intellectual property and bias are only a few of the potential pitfalls. 

Gartner advises to avoid these and other unintended consequences, keep in mind the following:  

• AI will not evolve to regulate itself — so humans will need to regulate it; 

• The best time to identify relevant risks to your organisation is before you implement AI; 

• Responsible use of AI is a cross-functional effort that requires a foundation of transparency, trust and security to ensure your organisation can exploit AI’s benefits while mitigating risk. 

Data, analytics and AI strategies are critical to achieving and scaling business outcomes today. Developing data science and advanced analytics capabilities is one way that businesses can maximise their ROAS. 

Ad fraud software is one solution 

Detecting fraud in digital channels is a challenge, due to the competing requirements of dealing with emerging attack vectors and delivering a smooth user experience.  

Ad fraud software, like Veracity Trust Network’s Ad Fraud Prevention, improves paid advertising and helps protect marketers digital campaigns from malicious bots and ad fraud. 

By using machine learning in combination with data analysis and other AI-powered solutions, our Ad Fraud Prevention platform will weed out any non-human clicks from your advertising campaigns and track every link to ensure malicious bots are blocked. 

Implementing ad fraud detection tools won’t directly stop ad fraud from happening, but they can provide you with valuable insights you can use to optimise your other ad fraud prevention efforts. 

Our Ad Fraud Prevention shows you campaign results for human and engaged visitors, not skewed by invalid traffic. This allows you to measure the true Cost Per Human Visitor (CPV) and Cost Per Lead (CPL) to give an accurate view of how your client campaigns are performing. 

It’s a powerful answer with an incredibly simple, five-minute setup. Either set and forget to block the bots with peace of mind or use its powerful intelligence tools to improve your performance, ROI and security. 

Talk to us and find out how our ad fraud software will improve your advertising ROAS: 

https://veracitytrustnetwork.com/ad-fraud-traffic-audit  

 

26th Jul 2024