Ad Fraud definition

Ad fraud is the falsification of the number of times a digital advertisement is clicked on or displayed. This is a particularly vital topic for marketers to understand. Fraudulent activity can make a significant dent in marketing budgets and skew performance results to the detriment of future strategies.

Ad fraud is typically carried out by competitors or fraudulent publishers who utilise automated bot traffic to repeatedly click on ads. In this instance, money is paid by the advertiser to the publisher and the advertising platform, with the potential to defraud a business of huge sums of money.

Detecting Ad Fraud

If you suspect ad fraud is being carried out on, there are several identifying factors to be aware of:

• Repeated visits from the same user agent and spikes in traffic
• Unusually low conversion rates during traffic spikes
• Abnormal peaks in the number of clicks or impressions
• A lack of conversions vs. other platforms

Preventing Ad Fraud

Working with a technology provider that can accurately detect automated bot traffic and identify fraudulent behaviour, defining actions to be taken in the event of an ad fraud attack.

However, working with a vendor that gives you an accurate view of all traffic to your web-facing infrastructure will give you with a comprehensive understanding of what ordinary vs. anomalous traffic behaviour looks like, enabling the effective and efficient blocking of malicious activity.