Juniper Research Estimates Ad Fraud will Cost Advertisers $19 Billion in 2018

MMW was privy to an exclusive early look at the summary findings of a new report from Juniper Research.

The research shows that advertisers will likely lose an estimated $19 billion to fraudulent activities next year.

All told, that’s equivalent to $51 million per day.

This figure, representing advertising on online and mobile devices, will continue to rise, reaching $44 billion by 2022, a media release summarizes.

Juniper’s new research, Future Digital Advertising – AI, Ad Fraud & Ad Blocking 2017-2022, claimed that the ‘Walled Garden’, a closed platform approach whereby advertising platforms restrict the flow of advertising performance data to advertisers and publishers must be abandoned to stimulate transparency between stakeholders. The report found that advertising fraud rates will continue to increase as a result of this, further hindering stakeholder efforts in tackling fraud.

What’s more, the Juniper team says that the research predicted that AI will be crucial in analysing the vast amounts of data generated from advertising activities daily and minimizing loss due to fraud. It predicted that fraudsters will increasingly innovate in their approaches to imitate genuine advertising activity including simulated clicks, mouse movements and social network accounts.

“Fraudsters will continue to heavily invest in domains, user accounts and bot farms in order to appear genuine” argued research author Sam Barker. “Advertising stakeholders will demand constant vigilance against the threat of ad fraud, which will only be achieved through the correct implementation of AI services”.

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