#programmatic ad fraud

The global programmatic advertising market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.8% from 2024 to 2030. Programmatic advertising encompasses a wide range of digital channels, from walled gardens like Google and Facebook to connected television (CTV) and OTT. This variety of channels’ capacity increased the reach of advertisements to even broader groups of audiences.   

However, this wider scope of innovation has also opened the door to significant fraud, with programmatic ad fraud becoming a growing concern for marketers worldwide. With the programmatically run advertisements at $546billion in 2023 according to a Statista report, the volume of ad fraud and low-quality impressions stand at 15-20% according to mFilterIt reports.  

To make their digital campaigns a success advertisers need AI-ML driven ad fraud analytics to improve ROAS (return on ad spends) and reduce budget wastages. 

Are reputed ad platforms, trade desks and walled gardens also affected by programmatic ad fraud? 

 Programmatic ad fraud broadly refers to the malicious practice of manipulating online ad campaigns through automated software, to generate revenue.  

Nowadays new ad platforms, trade desks and reputable walled gardens are coming into the limelight with advertisers having a positive perspective and confidence about them. This confidence stems from the fact that they have positioned themselves as platforms having a clean inventory with superior quality traffic making a differentiated mark from traditional affiliates.  

As ad fraud analytics uncovers, it is not the case. These platforms are bigger black boxes than affiliates, and the fraud rates are similar with new tactics uncovering every day. Advertisers need to place a check on these platforms through independent third-party validation tools which can provide a full-funnel analysis.  

New tactics that are coming up in the programmatic ad ecosystem are  

Frequency Cap Breaches 

Frequency capping is when a brand sets a limit on the number of times its advertisement is displayed to a given user within a specific time frame. Breaching this leads to oversaturation, which means the ads are shown to the same users instead of reaching a broader audience. This not only wastes ad spending but also lowers the reach of the ads and the campaign’s overall efficacy, which is in violation of the objective of the branding campaign. mFilterIt has identified approx. 25% of f-cap violations depending on the campaign. 

Inaccurate OTT Viewability Scoring

Viewability metrics are crucial for determining if an ad has been viewed by a human or a bot. Uncertain data from inaccurate metrics might make it challenging for advertisers to assess the success of their efforts. Without accurate viewability, brands may end up paying for impressions that their intended audience never saw.   

Low-Quality Impressions

These impressions come from content that mainly attracts visitors who are not genuinely interested in the brand or product. It comes from sites specially designed to generate clicks from clickbait sites resulting in limited reach and exposure. Such sites have poor conversion rates causing brands to waste budget and inefficient ad placements.  These are mostly generated by Made-For Ad Sites (MFAs). The ANA report on ad fraud states that MFA websites represent 21% of impressions and 15 % of ad spend overall.  

The global programmatic advertising market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.8% from 2024 to 2030. Programmatic advertising encompasses a wide range of digital channels, from walled gardens like Google and Facebook to connected television (CTV) and OTT. This variety of channels’ capacity increased the reach of advertisements to even broader groups of audiences.   

However, this wider scope of innovation has also opened the door to significant fraud, with programmatic ad fraud becoming a growing concern for marketers worldwide. With the programmatically run advertisements at $546billion in 2023 according to a Statista report, the volume of ad fraud and low-quality impressions stand at 15-20% according to mFilterIt reports.  

In this competitive digital environment, brand messaging reaching the right audience at the right place has become imperative. To boost the brand’s success rate, programmatic advertising is the best way to ensure high accuracy and high turnover in depth. In 2023, programmatic advertisements accounted for 90% of the total ad spending. However, the big question is how brands and businesses are leveling it up to remain relevant in the market. Let’s discuss how programmatic advertising can be used the right way by implementing the right strategies.

Why Brands are Embracing Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising has transformed the way brands interact with their target audiences by automating the buying and placement of ads with the help of powerful algorithms that provide precision, efficiency, and scalability. to increase the success rate which is lacking in traditional advertising.

Precise Targeting: Using precise targeting in programmatic ad marketers use data to identify target audiences. It allows brands to send modified messages based on demographics, activities, and even real-time intent.

Real-Time Optimization: Programmatic campaigns help in delivering real-time analytics, allowing brands to monitor performance and adjust the campaign according to their need. This enables marketers to optimize ad creatives, placements, and budgets in real-time, resulting in better results.

Scalability Across Platforms: Programmatic advertising connects people to a wide range of platforms, including social media and display networks, as well as connected TV and audio streaming services. This enables marketers to maintain the presence across several touchpoints without having any extra burden on managing individual channels separately.

Cost Efficiency: Traditional processes of buying and placement of ads can be time-consuming as they require negotiations and manual adjustments. With programmatic systems marketers can process millions of transactions in milliseconds, enabling brands to swiftly launch and adjust campaigns to close potential opportunities.

Programmatic Advertising in USA, UAE, Saudi Arabia, India.

The rise of programmatic advertising has shifted the focus towards accuracy and automation. It surged from $9.75 billion in 2023 to $12.46 billion in 2024, an annual growth rate of 27.8% and is expected to continue expanding, reaching $28.12 billion by 2028 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.6%. However, with AI coming into the picture, performance programmatic platforms are prone to ad fraud even more. The need for optimization of programmatic media buying with comprehensive ad fraud solution across the advertising funnel is the necessity to yield results.

Why Programmatic Ad fraud prevention?

Protect your brand with programmatic ad fraud prevention. Ensuring the invalid traffic is blocked from malicious sources not only safeguards advertising budget but also protect brand reputation.

Here’s how mFilterIt guides with trust and transparency in programmatic advertising:

Impression fraud

Impression Fraud analysis is better at the post-bid stage than pre-bid, measuring performance beyond viewability metrics. In pre-bid analysis, i.e. before the ad is served, fraud can be identified based on only two parameters, IP and User Agents. Also, the time for analysis is limited to 10 milliseconds. This results in a meager 2% fraud identification.

This is where a post-bid analysis trumps a pre-bid impression validation. Now that we have several more parameters fraud detection is done on deterministic and heuristic measures as well. This results in the detection of higher invalid impressions of 15–20%. This results in improved ROI on Ad spending. Post-bid impression analysis is a more beneficial method for detecting ad fraud.

Made for Ad sites

Advertisers spend an average of 15% of their programmatic budget on MFA sites, but some may spend as much as 42%. While 35% of programmatic spending is wasted on low-value environments like MFA sites, according to a recent study by ANA (Association of National Advertisers). By focusing on robust ad fraud detection advertisers can combat the various forms of fraud that undermine their campaigns across digital advertising platforms. Prioritizing impression validation is essential for maximizing return on investment and maintaining trust in the advertising ecosystem.

MFA Sites not only drain budgets but also pose a challenge to a brand’s safety. Limited reach and exposure, no real user engagement misleading clicks, click fraud, artificially inflated metrics, poor conversion rates, low-quality/intent traffic and brand un-safe content tarnished brand image and lead to budget drainage.

Programmatic Advertising in USA, UAE, India, Saudi Arabia, Dubai.

Programmatic advertising was supposed to revolutionize digital marketing, delivering targeted ads to the right audience at the right time with unparalleled efficiency. Instead, it has become a breeding ground for fraud, where advertisers waste billions on impressions that never reach real consumers. If brands want to protect their ad dollars, it’s time to stop blindly trusting agencies and demand…

What is Programmatic Advertising? 

Programmatic Advertising is a computerized method of technology for online buying and selling of advertisements. This technique uses software and algorithms to buy ads, making it more methodical and systematic than traditional methods. Instead of directly purchasing ad space from the publishers, advertisers employ different platforms as well as tools to focus on specific audiences and balance their ad expenditure in real-time. 

Challenges in Programmatic Advertising  

While programmatic advertising has a lot of benefits, it also has some challenges as well. Here are some challenges: 

Ad Fraud in Programmatic Ads   

A serious issue related to the programmatic ad ecosystem is ad fraud. These fraudulent activities could lead to the offers being wasted and may be very poor in terms of ad campaigns; for instance, fake impressions and click fraud. Advertisers need to apply robust measures to fraud detection and prevention to protect their investment. 

Brand Safety with safe Ad placements  

Another critical challenge in the programmatic challenge is brand safety, which refers to making sure that ads are not placed alongside inappropriate or offensive content. Ensuring this will help reduce the risk by taking steps for brand safety and involving trusted partners. 

Ad Placement Relevancy  

Ad placement relevancy enables AI-based contextual level targeting that focuses on elements, logos, faces, keywords, objects, sentiments, and more for brands to place the right ads in the right ad space. We provide custom targeting and exclusion themes and accurate detection of unsafe content across a comprehensive set of brand safety categories as per the GARM guidelines. 

Optimizing Programmatic Advertising in UAE 

Programmatic Advertisement has several advantages that make it a preferred choice for many advertisers.  

According to Statista, In the digital Advertising Market, 76% of the digital advertising revenue will be generated through programmatic advertising in 2028, demonstrating the rise in embracing data-driven strategies and technologies in the advertising landscape. 

The global programmatic advertising market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.8% from 2024 to 2030. Programmatic advertising encompasses a wide range of digital channels, from walled gardens like Google and Facebook to connected television (CTV) and OTT. This variety of channels’ capacity increased the reach of advertisements to even broader groups of audiences.   

However, this wider scope of innovation has also opened the door to significant fraud, with programmatic ad fraud becoming a growing concern for marketers worldwide. With the programmatically run advertisements at $546billion in 2023 according to a Statista report, the volume of ad fraud and low-quality impressions stand at 15-20% according to mFilterIt reports. 

New tactics that are coming up in the programmatic ad ecosystem are:  

Frequency Cap Breaches – Frequency capping is when a brand sets a limit on the number of times its advertisement is displayed to a given user within a specific time frame. Breaching this leads to oversaturation, which means the ads are shown to the same users instead of reaching a broader audience. This not only wastes ad spending but also lowers the reach of the ads and the campaign’s overall efficacy, which is in violation of the objective of the branding campaign. mFilterIt has identified approx. 25% of f-cap violations depending on the campaign. 

Detection of Bot traffic is the major challenge in programmatic advertising. Automated blocking of ads such as invalid traffic in all branding campaigns across all programmatic platforms is critical for the success of the ad campaign.

The simplest, most surefire way to protect your interests is to use ad fraud detection tools. Such a tool uses AI and ML algorithms to continually and intelligently monitor the user activity on your ad campaigns. Since the algorithms work round the clock and without the influence of human bias, you can rest assured that your campaigns are protected the way they should be.