Dive Brief:

• Digital ad fraud is a top-of-mind concern for brand marketers and media agencies, according to “Ad Fraud in the US: How More Sophisticated Methods Are Hurting Mobile, Video and Performance Measurement,” a new report from eMarketer. 
• The top three concerns over digital media planning and buying are click fraud, bot traffic, and ad viewability, according to a recent survey of brand marketers and media agencies conducted by influencer marketing company MyersBizNet, as reported by eMarketer.
• The cost of fraudulent traffic was pegged at $4.6 billion last year by EY and the IAB. The groups estimated an additional $1.1 billion was lost to malvertising.

Dive Insight:

The digital advertising industry has been troubled by fraud, and marketers are worried about the effect on their digital media buys — for good reason. 

The fraud issue is intertwined with ad blocking adoption. The main reason for ad blocking adoption is a poor user experience, and ad fraud is just that: From ads that take too long to load due to fraudulent redirects to ads that deliver malware to the end user, ad fraud creates a bad experience for the end user. Both ad fraud and ad blocking are core issues that the digital ad industry needs to address — or risk losing internet users to ad blocking software and marketers to other channels.  

The solution is more transparency, according to Steve Sullivan, vp of partner success at Index Exchange. “A fully transparent, traceable supply chain that allows identification of all parties to a transaction is the only way to substantially reduce fraud,”  he told Marketing Dive. “There’s widespread acknowledgement that cutting the money off is crucial to slowing fraud, and following the money is, in turn, crucial to that effort.”