Dive Brief:

• A new study, “Eradicating Bot Fraud: The Path to Zero-Tolerance,” compared video ads served by ad platform Videology with bot-blocking tech from White Ops with video ads served without the tech and found a 22% lift in engagement with the bot-blocked ads.
• The test compared 300,000 video ads of each type – bot-blocked and not.
• The brand engagement was tested with a post-ad survey asking the viewer to respond. Bot-viewed ads obviously wouldn’t be able to complete the survey.

Dive Insight:

Videology, a video ad platform, and White Ops, a security firm, joined forces for research that pitted video ads equipped with bot-blocking technology against the same ads without the tech in place and found bot-blocked video ads garnered 22% more engagement.

White Ops estimates that advertisers will lose more than $6 billion to fake impressions from bots this year, with that amount possibly going up by another billion next year. The security firm says anywhere from 8% to 25% of all online video ad impressions are bots.

Tim Castree, managing director for Videology North America, said brands are concerned about bot fraud, but aren’t sure about the impact and extent of the problem. He added this study shows that bot-blocking tech offers advertisers better outcomes for video ad campaigns by reaching more humans with the ads.