7/14/16
by News Department on 07/14/16Are "BOTS' the new fraudsters???
A question some marketers are asking themselves, is if they are being scammed by digital advertisers?
This question is also gaining greater attention on Capitol Hill. Two lawmakers are asking the Federal Trade Commission to step in and look at whether a substantial percentage of ad clicks on the biggest advertising platforms are executed by bots, not human beings.
Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) point to studies that have indicated as much as 98% of all ad clicks on ad platforms such as Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Facebook during a seven-day period were executed by computer-automated programs commonly referred to as “botnets” or bots, which plague the digital advertising space by creating fake consumer traffic, artificially driving up the cost of advertising in the same way human fraudsters can manipulate the price of a stock by creating artificial trading volume.
An analysis by White Ops and the Association of National Advertisers estimates the manipulation will cost advertisers over $7.2 billion in the next year alone.
