Ad Fraud Is Organized Crime’s 2nd Biggest Source of Income
According to a recent report from the World Federation of Advertisers, there’s only one thing that generates more money for organized crime than bot fraud on digital ads...
That’s right. Ad fraud is almost as profitable as what is highly regarded as the world’s most rampant crime problem… and yet no one is doing anything about it.
I know what you’re thinking. There are so many ad platforms…what about the reputable ones advertisers have trusted their money to; aren’t they doing anything about it?
Unfortunately, they aren’t paid to care. They profit off of existing ad fraud and so there is no incentive for existing ad networks or platforms to solve this problem. The more clicks, the more revenue — regardless of whether those come from bots or genuine people.
As the problem worsens, so do the dollars lost to fraud. The global amount of advertising revenue lost to fraud is expected to double this year to a whopping $16.4 billion USD reaching a total of $50 billion lost by 2020.
The problem boils down to two major issues:
- A lack of transparency. Ad networks are trusted to grade their own homework without giving anyone access to independently verify their results.
- A lack of incentive to solve the problem. The reality is that ad networks make a lot of money off fraudulent activity and it costs them money to fix it.
Adbank aims to create a blockchain based solution that decentralizes the network using Ethereum and build a platform that runs on trust, not control. Using the blockchain allows for all information to be publicly posted on the ledger available for anyone and everyone to audit at anytime.
Go here to read the full report from the WFA on ad fraud.
Read about our plan to address ad fraud and bring transparency to the industry in the Adbank Whitepaper.
