How can advertisers validate impressions with web fraud?

The horizon of digital advertising is expanding with global digital ad spending expected to touch $740.3 billion in 2024. Digital retail media advertising spending is expected to grow by 21.3%, while connected TV (CTV) ad spending will grow by 19.6%.  Web fraud remains a significant challenge, undermining the effectiveness of ad campaigns and draining marketing budgets. One of the critical issues plaguing the online advertising world is the ad fraud protection and validation of ad impressions.  

According to Statista predictions 81% of digital advertising revenue is expected to be generated through programmatic advertising in 2028 making it even more critical to stay on top of the game protecting your ad spend. The key is not just depending on viewability analysis but pushing for full funnel protection. The real challenge lies in the validation of ad impressions. Ensuring that each impression is legitimate is crucial for advertisers seeking to protect their investments and achieve accurate campaign metrics.  

What Is Web Fraud?

Web fraud encompasses a range of deceptive practices aimed at generating invalid traffic (IVT) and fake interactions to mislead advertisers about the performance of their campaigns. Web fraud includes click fraud, impression fraud, and engagement fraud, which could significantly distort campaign performance metrics and dent return on investment (ROI).  

According to recent studies, digital ad fraud is projected to cost advertisers around $100 billion by 2025, a rapid rise from approx. $65 billion globally in 2023. The alarming trend highlights the urgent need for robust fraud detection and prevention mechanisms to safeguard digital advertising spending.  

Type of Web Fraud That Generate Invalid or Fraudulent Impressions 

• Ad Stacking: This display and impression fraud occurs when several layers of ads are on top of each other in a single ad spot. Even though only the top ad is visible and served, multiple advertisers are charged for the impression. When a user clicks on the top ad, the click is counted for all the ads in the stack.  

• Made-for-Ads Sites: Websites created solely to generate ad revenue with low-quality or irrelevant content designed to attract clicks and impressions without providing any real value to users. This leads to the exploitation of advertising budgets by drawing traffic that doesn’t lead to genuine engagement or conversions. 

• Device Farming: Large numbers of real or virtual devices at a place to generate fake interactions. Fraudsters use these devices to create artificial clicks, installs, or engagements, inflating metrics and defrauding advertisers by making it appear as if genuine user activity is taking place. 

• Pixel Stuffing: Ads are squeezed into individual pixels, often as small as 1×1 in size making them practically invisible to the visitors, they still register impressions, leading to fraudulent activity. 

• Imperceptible Window: Ads are displayed in windows that are too small or hidden from view. While the ad is technically served, the user can’t see it, leading to fraudulent impressions that waste advertisers’ budgets without delivering real value. 

Modern Post-bid Impression validation is better than Pre-bid Analysis 

Pre-bid vs Post-bid Analysis

Traditionally, impression validation has been conducted on a pre-bid basis, where advertisers attempt to verify impressions before bidding on ad inventory. However, this approach is often insufficient due to the dynamic and complex nature of web traffic.  

• Post-bid validation, conducted after the ad impression has been served, provides a more accurate and comprehensive assessment of impression legitimacy. 

• The fraud detection strategy should encompass post-bid parameters to create a comprehensive fraud prevention framework that spans the entire customer journey.  

• Full-Funnel Protection helps to analyse key stages such as impressions, clicks, visits or installs, leads or events, and ultimately purchases or sales. A full-funnel approach to fraud detection enables proactive and reactive identification of fraudulent activities across the complete lifecycle of a digital campaign. 

Impression Fraud analysis is better at the post-bid stage than pre-bid because:   

• 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 meagre 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. Doing post-bid analysis is a more beneficial method to detect ad fraud. 

Why is viewability not a measure of Ad fraud?

According to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 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.  

While many brands focus on viewability, it’s not a foolproof indicator of ad fraud. Here’s why: 

• Bot-generated views: Bots can be programmed to simulate human behaviour, including scrolling and pausing on pages, to ensure ads are “viewed.” These bots can inflate viewability rates without generating any real user engagement. 

• Low-Quality Traffic: Even if a human views an ad, the traffic may come from low-quality sources like click farms or websites with minimal user engagement. These impressions may not lead to conversions or meaningful interactions. 

• Click-Through Rates (CTR): While viewability indicates if an ad was seen, CTR measures if it was clicked on and engaged with. A high viewability rate and a low CTR can be a red flag for low-quality traffic or ad fraud. 

• Low conversion rates: Ultimately, advertising aims to drive conversions, such as sales or sign-ups. A high viewability rate without corresponding conversion increases is always suspicious  

Conclusion  

As the digital advertising landscape continues to expand, the importance of validating impressions against web fraud has never been more critical. GIVT and SIVT detection, click fraud, and impression fraud across the web ecosystem must be prevented to safeguard ad campaigns. Advertisers must adopt proactive strategies to ensure that their ad spending is not only protected but also effective.  

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. As the market evolves, staying vigilant against web fraud will empower advertisers to navigate challenges and seize opportunities with confidence. 

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