I’ve been in “digital” since the very beginning, here in New York’s Silicon Alley. I’ve witnessed the entire arc of its evolution — from the good (old) times to the bad (today). I’ve even had fierce fights with respected colleagues over the years about how digital was different and better than TV advertising, and why most dollars should move into digital.
Dollars have shifted into digital, but I never thought I’d be recommending advertisers shift their dollars back to TV and other offline media, until we get our digital “house” back in order — i.e. reduce the amounts of fraud plaguing it. This is because I severely — SEVERELY — underestimated the amount of fraud that was possible, and that is actually occurring now, right in front of our eyes.
I also didn’t anticipate that the trade associations that are supposed to inform their members about important issues, are instead covering up issues like fraud and downplaying its extent, in order to “keep the good times rollin’.” Still too many marketers love the big numbers they see on spreadsheets — whether it’s the quantity of ads their media agency got them, or the number of clicks they got, assuming that meant consumers “engaged” with their ads. They happily run to their bosses and show them these big numbers. No wonder they’d be embarrassed if ever those numbers were shown to be fake (created by bots and not by humans seeing and clicking on their digital ads).
It has also gotten back to me from multiple sources, that the trade associations (Assoc. of National Advertisers), agency holding companies (GroupM), and certification bodies (TAG – Trustworthy Accountability Group) have coordinated their talking points about me — that I am fear mongering to get more business for myself. I should set the record straight.
I will run measurement for any marketer at no cost for as long as it takes, to show them the actual data about their campaigns, so they can judge for themselves whether there is ad fraud impacting their digital campaigns. I am not saying there’s fraud; but I AM saying they should look more closely for themselves.
I do have to make a living. But making tons of money off of fraud is not the objective. In fact, my consulting retainers remain the same whether I show the clients there is 99% fraud or 9% fraud in their campaigns. So I do not have an incentive to say there is more fraud than there actually is. In fact, as a researcher, my priority is the accuracy of the data and my incentive is to show the client the data so they can decide for themselves whether something is fraud, or not fraud. If they agree that it is fraud, they can do something about it (blacklist the sites and apps in their DSP to avoid buying from them), and more importantly they understand why something is fraud. This is why I am a researcher, and not a blackbox fraud detection tech company.
I teach clients “how to fish” (i.e. what to look for in analytics) so they can become independent of me, or any other fraud detection tech for that matter.
You don’t even need to pay me anything for consulting — just look back at almost 8 years of documentation of fraud (in slide decks, and articles), ask me questions, and learn what to look for in your own analytics, without any fancy tech, to find fraud and reduce it themselves.
