Adtech Insider: Ad fraud and adbank
New to adbank? Find out what the whitepaper has to say about ad fraud.
The adbank whitepaper was published in 2017. In it, we detailed the unfortunate state of digital advertising: shady middlemen, rampant ad fraud, and excessive data privacy breaches. It’s now 2019 and the question is: Has the industry straightened themselves out? Let’s take a look at the state of ad fraud in 2017 versus 2019:
How bad was ad fraud in 2017?
In the adbank whitepaper, there are some very stark stats describing the state of ad fraud and why a solution like adbank is needed.
- Digital fraud cost advertisers $12.5 billion 2016, the ad-verification company AdBox estimated in February 2017. This was nearly $5 billion more than the number White Ops calculated.
- Fraudulent advertising has become very hard to identify. Only around $3 billion — or less than one half of the $7.83 billion worth of fraudulent programmatic advertising in 2016 was under review by major advertisers’ marketing departments. (The World Federation of Advertisers)
- The high levels of fraud occurred even though 80% of advertisers surveyed by ANA and White Ops deployed antifraud measures.
Ad fraud in 2019:
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like things have gotten any better. Media outlets and industry publications continue to report on the state of ad fraud:
What is ad fraud?
Simply put, ad fraud is fraudulent online activity, usually in the form of fake clicks or views performed by a “bot” instead of a real human. This seems like a victim-less crime at first, but upon closer inspection you can see the true risks associated with ad fraud. As we stated in the 2017 adbank whitepaper:
Some of those advertising fraud organizations might have the backing or, at least, the tolerance of governments in nations such as Russia. A simple way such fraudsters can get government support is to simply bribe politicians and officials. If White Ops’ revelations about AFK13’s moneymaking capabilities are true, such criminals certainly have the means to buy protection — even from heads of state or government.
As was revealed in the aftermath of the 2016 US election, there was a large amount of bot accounts posting on social media channels, with the express intention of swaying public opinion and election results.
Between the first two presidential debates, a third of pro-Trump tweets and nearly a fifth of pro-Clinton tweets came from automated accounts. via The Atlantic.
It’s important to note that it’s not just ad fraud that can be committed through sophisticated bot farms. Social media influencers and anyone wishing to quickly boost their online social capital are now known to purchase tens of thousands of fake followers. Below is a graph showing the follower accumulation of one Twitter user. The dots indicate the date the account was created. The dots highlighted in red show that those accounts were all created and followed the user’s Twitter account. Behaviour indicative of purchasing fake or bot accounts.
Why should you care about ad fraud and fake social media accounts?
Because the tech giants aren’t going to protect you. There, we said it! The reality is, protecting user data or stopping bot accounts is not an easy task for the big social media platforms and tech giants— and is often not a high priority either.
This is where adbank comes in. With the BLADE browser extensions, you can take the first step in protecting your privacy online, and even benefit from the billion dollar digital advertising business. BLADE works like a traditional ad blocker extension — it stops ads, pop-ups, cookies and more. Then, it replaces those ads with adbank-powered privacy-respecting ads that reward you fairly for viewing them.
Get BLADE for Chrome and Firefox!
Get BLADE for Chrome and Firefox at blade.software. Check out the FAQ’s at blade.software. Have questions for the team? Join the Telegram channel here to ask the team questions and get all the news first!
