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Ad fraud: Are marketers too quick to blame publishers and agencies?

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Ad fraud is probably the most talked about issue in modern-day digital marketing.While in the past digital performance marketing promised to reverse the traditional advertising model by letting marketers know precisely where their ads were yielding results, today there is a huge amount of mistrust in the world of digital.In a recent panel discussion during the one-day Digital Performance Marketing conference, Ronnie Brown, head of digital at Direct Asia, was of the view that ad fraud was birthed due to the lack of transparency in the purchasing process. He is of the view ad fraud is here to stay.Chasing after big numbers in your objective will always make you fall prey to it. At the end of the day, marketers need to think about objectives and sales instead of CPM numbers.Arun Kumar, head of digital marketing at Carousell, said ad fraud was still prevalent because most marketers don’t realise it could happen to them.But this does not necessarily mean the blame and mistrust should be directed at third-party agency partners. He added that brands should be responsible for their own tracking platforms, measurement partners and add-ons that can help track ad fraud.When asked if working directly with a publisher was a better option, he disagreed. He added that while there are some publishers he works with directly because of favourable pricing models, he wouldn’t advise it to be the main go-to strategy.“Working with a publisher gives you better options, but only if you have resources,” he said.“It’s a huge task and handling creatives and working with too many publishers can be taxing as well, which is why I would say that the most important thing is working with ad networks. We’ve been working with an agency which is an extension of our team.”Thomas Wolf, digital conversion manager at Google, seconded Kumar saying that instead of pointing fingers immediately at the publisher, the brand should look internally at the database and tools to see if they were set up correctly.“You should have your data as clean as possible and then bring it back to the publishers and try to consolidate both. In an ideal world, your publisher will be willing to share that data with you when a suspected ad fraud incident occurs,” Wolf said.But, nonetheless, there is no way to actually ensure that ad fraud will not happen at the end of the day, said Damien Lavin, chief revenue officer at AdParlor. The best you can do is have a set of technology tools and measurement systems set up and work with a partner who really seems invested in the region you are operating in.“Ad-blocking and ad fraud really hasn’t helped us with building trust. It’s hindered performance, but in the real world these things happen and we can’t control it, so to counter it we need to employ people who know what they are doing. There are some basic digital set-ups to mitigate these challenges,” he said.He added the best advice he could give clients would be to get an established tech partner and work with established publishers from a buying point of view and only select sites that you think are real and act more appropriately. As for ad-blocking, he doesn’t see this as a long-term problem.Publishers and consumers both know it is “an ad-funded world” and, hence, people can’t simply read content for free forever.Creativity in the world of digitalBut what is needed today is a boost of creativity in the digital world, Lavin added.Creativity is a huge and impactful part of the digital process and there’s a huge disconnect in creative concepts and agencies and application digital formats. There has to be an intent from creative agencies to learn more.Meanwhile, both Kumar and Brown added that ad fatigue was a very real issue today.“Ad fatigue is getting shorter which means tighter budgets and resources. Creativity, hence, is a very important lever to pull,” Brown said.While A-B testing is vital before putting out an ad, Google’s Wolf added that creativity ultimately comes with knowing your consumer.“In the offline world, market research is such a big deal. But online, A-B testing has not done a whole lot. Everyone is very invested in the ads they create. Creativity is not rocket science. You can be more creative by just taking a step back and asking colleagues and friends what they think. So just take a step back and figure out who you want to sell to and why,” he said.Also at the conference giving a talk on automating creativity was Benedict Hayes, managing director for SEA and India at Sociomantic Labs.He said, more than ever, finding the right customer in the right place at the right time with the right message is now more complex than ever. To bridge this gap, automation of creativity is needed.He explained that having different creatives, along with programmatic executions, allows you to sell to more demographics. While, yes, this might mean spending a little bit more with your creative partners, the pay-offs long-term can be worth the cost.“Creative is also about using the key data point that drives your business, and being smart. Creativity involves using data and programmatic to create seamless interactions with your brand,” he said.Meanwhile, Ben Farnsworth, regional director of Encore Digital, also added that dynamic creatives ensures the correct messages to the correct users – and because programmatic is one of the best vehicles for real-time learning – the power of creativity should be fully explored to ensure brand uplift.He added:With the help of the right creative content, programmatic is a cheaper way of creating brand uplift. 

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