It's Time to Fraud-Proof Your Brand by Looking Beyond the Usual Hiding Spots

Editor’s note: This piece is part of our Columnist Network series, which explores the tactical thoughts and actions from Adweek’s community of high-level experts. Today, Kubient’s Paul Roberts talks ad fraud—staying ahead of it and keeping clients educated. Below, in his own words, he urges brands to look beyond its usual hiding spots. Digital and programmatic advertising transactions occur in the blink of an eye, with the average transaction occurring between 1/10th to 3/10th of a second. In that window, an entire auction takes place with multiple technologies communicating with each other. In simplest terms, ad fraud occurs when someone falsifies inventory and audiences for advertisers to bid on, when in fact there is no inventory and bots are pocketing your ad spend. With bids taking place within milliseconds, it’s extremely hard to catch these bad actors, which is why it’s critical that brands and agencies are cautious when placing bids and vetting partners working on their behalf. Despite ad fraud being a priority in the conversations I’m having with marketers, it's clear that there is still an urgent need for education on the topic, and that it's something most brands and vendors still struggle with. Marketing, advertising and ad-tech professionals should consider IAB Tech Lab reports as just one data point about ad fraud rather than the whole picture, for example. The truth is, one governing body isn’t inclusive of all technologies that capture fraud, so how can these numbers be exhaustive? Traditionally, brands, agencies and, to some extent, tech platforms are only critical in certain areas, and rarely are those same groups evaluating these items on their own. In reality, they aren’t looking at how susceptible they are to bidding on fraudulent traffic and wasting ad spend. The lack of overall understanding of the role fraud plays in the ecosystem is concerning, especially as this has been a key issue for many organizations over the past few years. This is a problem we’re making a headway on, but by no means are we over the hump. We’ve found that, as these fraud issues escalate for some companies by involving members of the revenue team (and at times, the chief revenue officer, in addition to the marketing team and CMO), more brands are open to being audited and recommitting themselves to combating ad fraud and implementing effective ways of catching it. Earlier on, during the first wave of our industry focusing on ad fraud, companies like AppNexus filtered out a large majority of inventory that was fraudulent and ultimately saw CPMs drastically increase. Years ago, JPMorgan went from advertising on more than 400,000 websites to just 5,000 and didn’t experience any drop off in their KPIs or site traffic metrics. Moments like these, which should have been rallying cries for the industry, are helping companies see that they may only have a narrow window into the reality of the situation. The most important thing companies can do is cut out unnecessary middlemen who waste budgets by spinning their wheels, utilizing old data and not layering their technology to prevent bidding on fraudulent traffic. It’s become the norm to work with several partners, because why not? The more the merrier. But as the issue of fraud remains prevalent—and even grows—it’s time executives look at their supply chains and remove providers that aren’t adding value, or worse, are wasting millions of dollars in ad spend. While ad fraud has existed and plagued the industry, brands today are still just as susceptible, if not even more so, because they are only looking where they are being told. This creates immense opportunities for companies and organizations outside the IAB to also educate brands, media buyers and others on tactics and strategies to implement. Yes, creating collective data is a first step, but we need to go beyond finding fraud in the places we are being told that it is hiding. I’m hopeful that with more time and attention to ad fraud, brands will be able to see that it’s not as black and white as they are led to believe. Fraud is hard to catch and gets smarter over time, but with education and strong resources and partners, it can be overcome and mitigated.