Solving the challenge of ad fraud will involve changing the signal around which advertisers plan and buy, and making bots irrelevant, writes David Beaton in the second of a four-part series for WARC.

Why it matters

A sizeable and unacceptable proportion of digital marketing budgets are wasted due to ad fraud. This not only hinders marketing effectiveness, it also generates an image problem, with the industry inadvertently propping up criminals

Takeaways

• In 2022, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) found 18% of all internet ad traffic is coming from fraudulent bot activity. In dollar terms, that amounts to an estimated $120bn...