Eliminating fraud will help restore faith in digital advertising

WHERE once an advertisement was manually placed in a newspaper or aired on TV or radio and shown to a mass, unsegmented audience, advertising is now increasingly governed by programmatic technology that automates the targeted placement of digital ads in real time. There have been promises of increased effectiveness for brand campaigns, but downsides to the technology have been widely reported.

Indeed, the history of digital advertising has been marred by news stories about fraud - by this we mean invalid traffic: ads that are not seen by a human being but by a robot programmed to mimic human behaviour on the Internet.

In response, brands and agencies have shifted ad spend away from the uncertain world of digital advertising and back to the legacy channels of television and radio. We need to stop ringing the fraud bell and convince brands that digital advertising is safe and effective. And to do that, we must eliminate the conditions that make fraud possible and profitable.