Applying due diligence is vital when it comes to ad fraud prevention and it should be a key priority for anyone working with marketing budgets or looking at investment. 

The world of digital marketing is a rapidly changing one, and ad fraud is a primary concern for everyone in the industry.  

Fraud remains the most prevalent crime type in England and Wales, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). 

Professionals looking to invest in either their own company’s marketing budget – or who are thinking of engaging the services of a digital marketing agency – need to make sure they’re applying due diligence. 

As long ago as 2016, global losses to ad fraud were predicted by WFA, the World Federation of Advertisers, to hit more than $50 billion a year by the end of 2025. 

However, the latest figures from Statista now estimate that costs related to digital advertising fraud worldwide will increase in the five years between 2023 to 2028 from $88b to $172b – roughly 14 per cent annually and nearly double over the period. 

At the time, the WFA issued advice designed to assist marketers in taking practical steps to ensure that as little as possible of their advertising budget fell victim to ad fraud. The advice was produced in association with research foundation Bottlab.io as well as the Ad Fraud Council. 

Applying due diligence is the first step to preventing ad fraud 

If an organisation is spending money on digital advertising, it’s an unfortunate fact that it will be wasting a significant portion of it, whether aware or not, on bots and other malicious actors. 

For investors, this is a fundamental fact that must be taken into account by any due diligence team. Even within your own organisation, there needs to be a system of best practise which allows your sales team to monitor their ad spend – and make any necessary corrections to deal with bot clicks and non-human traffic. 

Use verification and ad fraud solutions so that you can confirm that the ads were delivered to the right place and to the right audience. Make sure that you are always blocking ad fraud, not just simply reporting on it.  

Mitigate the risk of paying for fraudulent impressions by making sure that you’re using accredited publishers who have been approved by the Media Ratings Council (MRC).  

Use pre-bid filtering to avoid fraud in programmatic buys. Pre-bidding allows brands and agencies to reduce fraud before the bid has even been placed.  

If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Focus less on low CPMs and more on KPIs tailored to campaign goals. Potentially look away from CPCs and low CPMs. 

As a last resort, look to use exclusion lists for fraud. Your marketing department or media agency should have a managed list they look after. 

It also pays to bear in mind that good results from a marketing campaign don’t always equate to profits. 

Sometimes strategic goals like customer acquisition, on-going sales and understanding your key target market and audience, can be a motivator for an ad campaign. 

Addressing digital ad spend wastage 

Most advertisers know how to optimise their campaigns for optimal performance but overlook the main culprit of wasted ad spend – click fraud, also known as ad fraud and fake clicks.  

Around 40% of Facebook ad clicks and impressions are fake, meaning they are made by bots, not humans. And 18% of clicks on Google PPC spend are also being made by bots. 

Checking Google Analytics on a regular basis makes it easier to spot irregularities which may be down to bot clicks. Monitoring the average number of page views, average session time, and the source of the referrer traffic makes it easier to spot bot visitors which don’t follow the same patterns. 

Applying due diligence here will mean you can reduce your digital ad spend wastage. Make sure you’re using independent data and looking “under the hood” at what the real figures are, not just accepting on face value the data from social media platforms. 

With marketing budgets falling to just under 8% of overall company revenue according to latest figures from Gartner, it pays to use ad fraud software as a key component in your marketing strategy toolset. 

Veracity’s Ad Fraud Prevention offers a solution 

We’ve worked hard to develop our Ad Fraud Prevention platform, using the best in AI and Machine Learning to provide an all-in-one solution which tracks every link click and website visit from your campaigns. 

The platform collates all visitor actions alongside behavioural and network analysis, to determine which are genuine human visits and which are likely to be bots and fake traffic. 

This gives you the most accurate and transparent marketing data you need to enable improved analytics, decision-making and the right results to maximise your ad spend. 

Ad Fraud Prevention’s patented, AI-powered protection blocks fake traffic, increases conversions and produces data you can actually trust. 

See how we’ve helped other brands and agencies in our Case Studies or just get in touch and take advantage of our free traffic audit to find out if your paid search and social ads are being affected by bots and fake traffic. 

12th Sep 2024