This comes after a report by ad verification company Adloox stated that businesses globally are expected to lose a massive $16.4 billion to online advertising fraud in 2017
In a move that may be the first in a battle against advertising fraud, Google has issued refunds to hundreds of advertisers for running ads on websites with fraudulent traffic generated by automated bots.
Besides tackling ad fraud, this could also help them to bring more authenticity to their metrics which advertisers question in terms of the return on investment (RoI) with ad fraud growing.
The refunds represent only a small portion of the original spending—7% to 10%—since rest of the money has already been passed on to site owners and middlemen, according to a media report.
This comes after a report by ad verification company Adloox stated that businesses globally are expected to lose a massive $16.4 billion to online advertising fraud in 2017.
It further said that 20% of the total digital ad spends were wasted in 2016 due to ad fraud.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, informed marketers and ad agency partners that their ads shown through the search engine had garnered fraudulent traffic generated by bots, which certainly would never click on their ads they had paid for to be shown.
“Today, we can’t disclose the information about third parties. So when we aren’t able to catch invalid traffic before it impacts our advertisers and we’re unable to refund their media spent, it hurts us, even if we’re not responsible,” Scott Spencer, director of project management at Google said.
Spencer added that the meagre refunds had been paid back to advertisers.
According to the report, the refunds primarily involved video advertising and highlight a persistent issue that threatens the health of commercial content online.
Google has geared up to resolve the issue. It is believed that the search engine will provide more clarity over which tech providers in the ad-buying chain are responsible for making the refunds.
Ad fraud has been one of the highest in India too with ad fraud in the country 2.4 times higher than the global average.
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