The interesting thing about ad fraud is the people that lose have no ability to police the problem. Ad networks get paid for fraud. Intelligent ad buyers that use cost-per-acquisition targeting, don't care because they just bid lower if the traffic is a mix of fraud.
The losers are unsophisticated ad buyers such as the brand advertisers that use ad agencies to fill their ads with garbage traffic. Proctor and Gamble has recently figured that internet display is pretty much worthless. The other losers are legit publishers. I am perfectly happy to pay $0.50 a click with half the traffic being fraud, as I am willing to pay $1.00 a click for legit traffic from legit publishers. I get the same result, buy my money gets split 50/50 between legit publishers and crooks.
I am mostly a dev, but have bought more than $1M in advertising on multiple platforms. The biggest joke I have ever seen was AppNexus. It was like 70% or more fraud, and it was the most obvious crap imaginable. For instance, all clicks coming from 8 month old user agents for evergreen browsers.
Google Adwords and Double Click have been mostly clean. I'd say 85-90%. I do see stuff that is obvious bullshit from time to time, and it goes away pretty quickly and but Google doesn't refund the money. I don't really care... they make it so we can police it pretty well. Facebook ads are completely clean, but they don't run a network.
The simple rule for picking a ad platform is: if it isn't loaded with performance advertisers (CPA), then stay the hell away.
While I agree on the mostly non-existent fraud[1] for ad views on the Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger properties direction, they actually do run a network now[2]. I can't find any information about how it handles ad views when it can't identify the end user. If they don't display an ad then it's likely as robust as the on-property views. But if it shows ads, then it probably introduces the same level of fraud as you see on AdWords.
[1] Fraud free doesn't mean bullshit free. They tend to be very liberal with how they calculate billable events from user interactions.
Ad networks value proposition is give us money and an ad and your revenue will rise. If there's fraud that just dilutes the effectiveness of the proposition. Eventually poor quality networks die in the same way that the market winnows fertilizer etc. There is no free lunch
Assumes attribution, which is a hard problem. If I can't measure whether a digital ad campaign (in your case) increased revenue than I can't select for best performing network. Attribution is also gamed and complex (last click, cookie stuffing, modeled, outright fraud, etc)
I agree. It means that all roads lead to Google. The network size is advantage enough, and the ability to detect fraud is the cherry on top. Having a ton of exclusion data from advertisers is damn near impossible to replicate.
The losers are unsophisticated ad buyers such as the brand advertisers that use ad agencies to fill their ads with garbage traffic. Proctor and Gamble has recently figured that internet display is pretty much worthless. The other losers are legit publishers. I am perfectly happy to pay $0.50 a click with half the traffic being fraud, as I am willing to pay $1.00 a click for legit traffic from legit publishers. I get the same result, buy my money gets split 50/50 between legit publishers and crooks.
I am mostly a dev, but have bought more than $1M in advertising on multiple platforms. The biggest joke I have ever seen was AppNexus. It was like 70% or more fraud, and it was the most obvious crap imaginable. For instance, all clicks coming from 8 month old user agents for evergreen browsers.
Google Adwords and Double Click have been mostly clean. I'd say 85-90%. I do see stuff that is obvious bullshit from time to time, and it goes away pretty quickly and but Google doesn't refund the money. I don't really care... they make it so we can police it pretty well. Facebook ads are completely clean, but they don't run a network.
The simple rule for picking a ad platform is: if it isn't loaded with performance advertisers (CPA), then stay the hell away.