The industry's trade associations Interactive Advertising Bureau, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers announced a new plan to take on ad fraud. Currently, there are a number of services site owners can use to increase traffic to their websites such as pay-per-click solutions, directory sites and search engines. While many of these services are legitimate, a growing number of these third-party services have been found to actually send artificial traffic to websites. Since these services have promised to deliver increased traffic, they sometimes use click bolts or incentives to generate the traffic their clients expect. This traffic is fraudulent since it costs advertisers a significant amount of money for an ad that no one actually saw.
While the IAB does not believe advertisers are purposefully buying fraudulent traffic, it does believe they are turning a blind eye. As a result, they have announced that new obligations, standards and consequences will be placed on publishers, networks and exchanges. These new rules have not yet been detailed but are expected to put more scrutiny on how traffic purchasing is conducted. The goal is not to eliminate buying traffic but rather to make publishers, networks and exchanges more aware of where their traffic is coming from.
This will be a significant change for the industry as it is currently estimated by Wenda Millard, President of Medialink, that 25% or approximately $7.5 billion of the online ad market is fraudulent. Most publishers and networks ignore this issue as they are focused on revenues and churning out marketing plans. This new regulation will force them to more closely examine how they conduct both their traffic purchasing and advertising. While this is good news for advertisers, it could also potentially result in higher prices. As publishers have to spend more time vetting their processes, they may pass that expense onto advertisers. It will be interesting to see the details of the regulations and consequences and how those change how the online ad space is conducted.
Sources:
1. Clicks and Impressions, Google AdSense
2. It's About to Get Harder to Claim Ignorance on Ad Fraud, AdAge
3. The Amount of Questionable Online Traffic Will Blow Your Mine, AdWeek
While the IAB does not believe advertisers are purposefully buying fraudulent traffic, it does believe they are turning a blind eye. As a result, they have announced that new obligations, standards and consequences will be placed on publishers, networks and exchanges. These new rules have not yet been detailed but are expected to put more scrutiny on how traffic purchasing is conducted. The goal is not to eliminate buying traffic but rather to make publishers, networks and exchanges more aware of where their traffic is coming from.
This will be a significant change for the industry as it is currently estimated by Wenda Millard, President of Medialink, that 25% or approximately $7.5 billion of the online ad market is fraudulent. Most publishers and networks ignore this issue as they are focused on revenues and churning out marketing plans. This new regulation will force them to more closely examine how they conduct both their traffic purchasing and advertising. While this is good news for advertisers, it could also potentially result in higher prices. As publishers have to spend more time vetting their processes, they may pass that expense onto advertisers. It will be interesting to see the details of the regulations and consequences and how those change how the online ad space is conducted.
Sources:
1. Clicks and Impressions, Google AdSense
2. It's About to Get Harder to Claim Ignorance on Ad Fraud, AdAge
3. The Amount of Questionable Online Traffic Will Blow Your Mine, AdWeek
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