Advertisers will spend $84 billion on ad fraud this year: report

Nearly a quarter of online marketing dollars will go to ad fraud this year, a report from Juniper Research found.

Ad fraud is projected to cost marketers $84 billion in 2023, or about 22% of the $382 billion spent on online advertising, according to the marketing research firm. For mobile, it’s a bit higher, representing about 30% of spend.

According to the report, marketers will spend $747 billion annually on digital advertising in 2028, with ad fraud accounting for 23%. In 2028, most of the ad spend loss (42%) is projected to be in North America, followed by India, per the analysis.

In the report, ad fraud is defined as “the illegal act of intentionally repeated clicking on PPC (pay-per-click) ads to artificially inflate traffic statistics and generate revenue for illegitimate sources whilst reducing return on ad spend for advertisers.” It can be done through click bots, click farms, and incentivized clicks.

The study analyzed digital advertising datasets from 78,000 “unique sources” across 45 countries.

Research released this summer by the Association of National Advertisers found that marketers spend about $20 billion on “made-for-advertising” sites that lure readers in with clickbait.

The industry has recently made moves to try and stamp this inventory out: Last month, several trade groups came together to come up with a common definition for “made-for-advertising” sites, while supply-side platforms like Pubmatic and Magnite said they’d no longer include this inventory in curated publisher lists sold to select advertisers.