One of advertising’s oft repeated phrases is Half my advertising money is wasted. I just don’t know which half. Interestingly, the British attribute the quote to William Lever, while American sources attribute it to John Wanamaker. Regardless of who said it first, you’ve probably heard the phrase.
Turns out that when it comes to online advertising, Lever and Wanamaker were wildly optimistic. A new study shows that half of ad impressions and 95% of clicks are fraudulent.
As reported in MediaPost:
Click fraud continues to plague online advertising, but many just want to sweep it under the rug. Radar Research managing partner Marissa Gluck calls it "the dirty little secret of the online ad industry that no one wants to talk about."
Perhaps that's because data released Thursday in a study conducted in July reveals that more than half of ad impressions and 95% of clicks in online ad buys were fraudulent. Gluck compiled and analyzed the findings published by ad optimization company Mpire, Seattle, Wash., with help from its AdXpose technology.
To see how big of an issue this has become, do a Google on click fraud.
Apparently the rampant fraud isn’t deterring advertisers from diverting more and more dollars from traditional advertising to online. Maybe radio stations should take a cue from online. Don't increase the spot load. Just play music over half the spots you run.
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