Did you know that $120 billion is lost to ad fraud every year? And yet, many marketers and advertisers aren’t convinced they’re being affected by it. In fact, we recently conducted a report that revealed only 2.5% of advertisers are very confident they are not affected by ad fraud. In reality, most, if not all, of today’s marketers and advertisers are in some way impacted by the damaging consequences of ad fraud. So, how can you find out if your ad Campaigns Affected by Fraud? That is exactly what I’m going to answer in this article.
The devil is in the data: Ad fraud benchmarks prove you’re highly likely to be affected by fraud
The impacts of ad fraud aren’t talked about enough in the digital advertising industry, but the data doesn’t lie. Ad fraud is widespread and affects all businesses regardless of size, location, and industry.
Here are just a few industry benchmarks that demonstrate just how far-reaching ad fraud is.
- Almost half of all web traffic can be attributed to bots — meaning that you cannot be completely sure your ads are being seen by humans, or at least without using the right solutions.
- An estimated 14% of all clicks on pay-per-click (PPC) ads (social and search) are considered to be derived from click fraud. This is a huge number when you consider how many PPC ads are displayed on the internet every day.
- Ad fraud directly causes an 11% reduction in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and a 9% increase in Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). These figures show that, right off the bat, you’re losing money because of the presence of ad fraud.
- Fraudsters target all types of advertising channels. Our data from our 2022 Annual Ad Fraud Report shows that indirect affiliate, native, and programmatic marketing are the channels most susceptible to ad fraud.
As you can see, ad fraud isn’t an invisible activity that only affects big companies or those with high budgets. It is a ubiquitous form of digital fraud impacting the entire industry – your business included.
Signs that ad fraud is likely affecting your ad campaigns
With so much at stake, it’s crucial to know the early warning signs that ad fraud is playing havoc with your campaigns. This is the only way to begin mitigating the damage ad fraud can and will cause.
More importantly, it’s essential to understand that ad fraud affects the entire advertising funnel. While there’s a lot of chatter about PPC campaigns and click fraud, fraudsters also target your impressions and leads, including fill-out forms, demo requests, and installs.
In general, some of the most common warning signs of ad fraud are:
- An increase in CAC
- A decrease in ROAS
- Not reaching your acquisition or growth goals
- Seeing irregular sources of traffic in your campaign data
Other warning signs across the advertising funnel
Just as different ad fraud techniques target different parts of the funnel, the type of ad fraud that’s at play will usually produce recurrent warning signs.
Let’s look at some of the specific red flags associated with different types of ad fraud.
Impression fraud
- Sudden spikes in the volume of impressions
- Spike in out-of-target impressions
- Low clickthrough rates
Click fraud
- High click volumes coupled with low conversion rates
- High bounce rates
- A high number of clicks from countries outside your target area
Lead fraud
- Unusually high conversion rates from click to lead
- Low conversion rates from lead to sales
- Low engagement rates (in Freemium models)
So, you think you’re affected by ad fraud — but how can you make sure?
Once you’re suspicious that ad fraud is present in your campaigns, it’s time to investigate further. To detect ad fraud, you have two options — you can either use manual methods or a dedicated anti-ad fraud solution.
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Here’s an explanation of how both methods work.
1. Manual ad fraud detection
Manually detecting ad fraud can be carried out by pinpointing the anomalies we listed above in your campaign data. This involves combing through the data in the backend of your campaigns. Sometimes, an organization’s IT team will help detect these anomalies.
However, since ad fraud is becoming increasingly sophisticated, even the most expert IT teams are unable to detect ad fraud techniques. Plus, since there now are innumerable types and subsets of ad fraud, often performed by professional fraudsters at an alarming rate, these time-consuming manual methods cannot keep pace with the scale needed.
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2. Tech-assisted ad fraud detection
On the other hand, anti-ad fraud solutions are specifically designed to detect and prevent ad fraud. These advanced solutions provide insights about your traffic validity and include even the most sophisticated ad fraud techniques. This is made possible thanks to continuously refined machine-learning algorithms.
Since campaigns produce so much data, the best anti-ad fraud solutions extract data patterns that are too large for humans to provide insights into new or unusual trends. Ultimately, humans cannot possibly identify ad fraud with the same degree of accuracy or speed as sophisticated anti-ad fraud solutions.
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Okay, you’ve been hit by Ad Campaigns Affected By Fraud– what should you do now?
Here’s the good news: The days of accepting ad fraud as an inevitable cost of online advertising are over. Now, there are several specialized anti-ad fraud solutions out there, which, in combination with your existing marketing tech stack (Google Analytics, CMS, and CRM), enable you to not just detect ad fraud, but prevent it from entering your ad campaigns in the first place.
Anti-ad fraud solutions also help you partner with the right ad publisher networks and affiliates and support you in claiming refunds when needed.
Most importantly, investing in anti-ad fraud solutions will prevent your budget from being lost to fraudsters and provide you with the accurate data you need to inform future strategies — all resulting in your objectives of a higher ROAS and lower CAC.
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