Here's some good news for marketers: The amount of advertising spend lost to online bot fraud is declining, according to a recent report from White Ops and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).
The report was based on data from the digital campaigns of 50 ANA members. The researchers examined more than 2,400 campaigns that ran across more than 600,000 domains (search and social bot fraud were not part of the analysis).
Some $5.8 billion of ad spend is expected to be lost globally to online bots this year, down from $6.5 billion in 2017, when the researchers last examined the issue. That 11% decline is particularly noteworthy because digital ad spend increased 25% globally between 2017 and 2019.
The researchers say the success in combating online bot ad fraud is being driven by a range of factors, including efforts to dismantle bot networks, more purchasing of advertising via programmatic networks with built-in fraud prevention measures, and innovations such as ads.txt that reduce spoofing.
The researchers found that although bot attempts account for 20-35% of ad online impressions, the amount of fraud that gets through and gets paid for is much smaller.
Some 8% of desktop display ad impressions are estimated to be successful bot fraud, down from 9% in 2017, and 14% of desktop video ad impressions are estimated to be successful bot fraud, down from 22% in 2017.
About the research: The report was based on data from the digital campaigns of 50 ANA members. The researchers examined more than 2,400 campaigns that ran across more than 600,000 domains (search and social bot fraud were not part of the analysis).
