2020 has not gone the way anyone envisioned it. Irrespective of industry, it has been nothing short of a challenge to those in the advertising ecosystem. DSPs, SSPs, and publishers have all been searching for ways to not only survive in this new reality, but to thrive. At the onset of the pandemic, more and more people were spending every day at home due to stay-at-home orders causing ad impressions to soar. However, publishers and ad tech platforms did not see a surge in revenue flow. In fact, many cases saw the ad spend drop despite the outpouring of impressions. This has caused a significant impact to their business, leaving them to consider how they too can be more efficient and effective in running it.
Advertising platforms are strategizing on how they should handle this as they look into their budgets and scrutinize where they should spend. One area is fraud protection as it is both a short and long term necessity to help platforms and publishers navigate our current, collective reality. In fact, this difficult climate is when it’s important to really lean into the fight against fraud to actually save costs and increase ROI, improving business results now, and setting yourself up for the future.
Adding fraud protection has a cost to it but there are significant benefits. By enabling it, you will protect yourself from sophisticated bot attacks and all of the hard work you put in thus far to insulate your inventory or platform. For example, supply partners’ perceived reputation with demand partners closely mirrors the actual quality of your inventory. They will certainly take notice if your bot attacks and ad fraud rise, potentially costing yourself more money in the long run from your revenue stream.
Your future revenue and reputation are not the only things at risk when bots take up residence in your impressions. It’s a difficult situation to talk about but, clawbacks (refund payments) for disputed advertising impressions can be time-consuming, embarrassing, and costly for all involved. Publishers and platforms stand to lose the most from this, having to repay for the impressions without the hope of recouping the lost inventory and a loss of credibility. Strengthening your fraud protection plan now prevents issues like this, and in turn, you’ll strengthen your reputation, deliver more human impressions, and make more money.
As an industry, we get smarter and stronger in our approach to fraud as more parts of the industry take these threats to digital advertising seriously. We can maximize the investments we have already made and continue to make by working together and building a collectively protected ecosystem.
We believe the best approach is to increase your defenses against fraud, and strengthen them. Now is the time to build better processes and make stronger decisions. Set stringent thresholds for inventory sources, closely monitor them daily, and hold all inventory sources to the highest standards. It is with our shared experience and knowledge that we can protect against fraudsters, improve your business results, and be in an even stronger position when we get on the other side of the pandemic.
