The advertising industry’s rapid shift to digital formats is providing a boon to fraudsters, who will cost brands $7.2bn this year, up from $6.3bn in 2015, according to new research.
Marketers are losing money to fraudulent viewing by “bots”, or automated computer programs, that mimic human behaviour. Advertisers pay for those views even though they are not seen by the real people campaigns are intended to reach.
The study by the US’s Association of National Advertisers, whose members collectively spend more than $250bn a year on marketing, and White Ops, an online ad fraud investigator, attributed the rise in projected losses to an expected 15 per cent rise in digital ad spending this year.
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