Campaign Security: Are Your Marketing Dollars Protected?

Digital marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry, and with that much money floating around, it’s inevitable that some level of fraud will occur. This is one of the unfortunate realities that digital marketers and advertisers have to deal with, and without having any measures in place to counteract the effects of fraud, your marketing dollars are subject to being wasted, and in some cases, stolen outright.

According to a recent report published by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), digital advertisers worldwide will lose a staggering $7.2 billion to online advertising fraud by the end of 2016. So what exactly are these nefarious characters doing to siphon so much money from legitimate marketing campaigns?

Understanding Digital Advertising Fraud

When it comes to protecting your campaign dollars, it pays to heed the advice of the famous Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu: “Know thy enemy.” Some of the most prevalent enemies to a robust campaign ROI are:

• Bot traffic – This refers to web traffic and related activity that is artificially generated from bots (e.g., automated programs). Bot traffic is designed to simulate the activity of a legitimate web user, and can be used to inflate ad impression numbers in order to generate higher ad revenue.
• Ad viewability problems – According to an infographic published by ad technology firm Infectious Media, roughly 54% of delivered ads go unviewed. Fraudsters can employ a number of shady tactics to “serve” an ad without giving it any chance to be viewed by humans, such as displaying invisible ads within hidden iFrames, etc.
• Click fraud – This is basically the practice of generating fraudulent clicks on pay-per-click (PPC) ads in order to inflate publisher revenues, or to sabotage rival advertisers by draining their budgets. These clicks can be generated by bots, or manually by employing rings of paid human clickers.

Campaign Security: Protecting Your Marketing Dollars

These unsettling elements of the digital marketing world provide plenty of incentive to fortify your campaigns against fraudulent activity. At 2060 Digital, we are committed to protecting our clients’ best interests by employing a number of highly effective campaign security measures, including:

• Maintaining and frequently updating a carefully curated blacklist of fraudulent sellers and sites
• Continually monitoring purchased traffic for quality by blocking malicious sites, unfavorable content and click-spoofing
• Employing dynamically maintained IP blocking technology
• Employing algorithmic and manual bid modification and inventory selection
• Maintaining compliance with Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standards and technical specifications
• Employing third-party pre-bid and post-delivery verification
• Prioritizing “above the fold” positioning
• Prioritizing ComScore 1000 and Quantcast 5000 whitelists

Fortifying Your Campaigns with Click Insurance

We are so confident in our approach that we can offer our clients a minimum of 0.1% click-through rate (CTR) on ordered impressions, which is nearly twice the national average according to statistics published by Think With Google. In addition, if your campaign falls short of the 0.1% benchmark, we will over-deliver impressions in order to ensure that you will hit the target CTR. To be clear, this 0.1% baseline is just that–a baseline. Our aim is to outperform these metrics through vigilant campaign monitoring and robust optimization.

You don’t have to throw your marketing dollars down the drain. By partnering with 2060 Digital, you can rest assured that your digital campaigns are protected from fraud, and positioned for optimal success. Click here to get in touch.