Cyber Fraud Online: Have Reports of Online Ad Fraud Been Greatly Exaggerated?

Nobody debates that online advertising has a fraud problem. But as chatter about it reverberates around the industry, some executives now claim the issue is being exaggerated. A portion of online ads can never actually be seen by real consumers, largely because of scammers that use non-human “bot” traffic or “invisible” ads to cheat marketers out of ad dollars. But questions about the size and severity of the issue remain unanswered. It’s essentially impossible to quantify what percentage of ads is fraudulent across the entire Web, or to estimate the number of ad dollars being wasted as a result.