The Evolving Threat of Ad Fraud in Digital Audio

Ad fraud is a low-risk, high-profit crime, which is what makes it so attractive to fraudsters. According to Juniper Research, global digital ad fraud will cost companies $100b by 2023. The latest target? Digital audio. Brittany Paril, Product Insights Marketing Manager at Digital Remedy, was recently featured on Mediatel News, discussing key points and red flags that marketers need to know and look out for in the fight against this evolving threat and the importance of strategic partnerships with the right technology and data providers to protect brand reputation and budgets against scammers. Here’s some highlights:

1. Digital audio is booming (creating new opportunities for fraud).
2. Digital audio fraud is impossible to eliminate completely, but there are ways to avoid it.
3. Digital audio fraud is similar to CTV ad fraud.
4. Auditing is necessary.
5. Choosing the right data partner is crucial.

To avoid fraudulent or low-quality audio traffic, some main identifiers and red flags that marketers can look out for include:

1. Name Recognition – Top brands are going to have quality inventory. The low quality is going to come from online radios and apps that no one has ever heard of, yet somehow have millions of impressions.
2. IP Addresses – Reputable sources appear much different in their reporting compared to non-reputable sources. When you see a single server reporting hundreds of thousands of impressions, that is abnormal. You would never see that in reporting from larger vendors.
3. Price – It’s true what they say, you get what you pay for. Questionable inventory may seem appealing because it is half the price of higher-end inventory, but you will most likely get half the quality inventory.
4. Frequency – With “pay to listen” opportunities, people can engage in incentivized audio experiences by keeping a browser open playing audio/ads, resulting in high frequencies in reporting. Advertisers may accept this and brush these results off, chalking it up to “someone has the radio on all day in their shop”. However, legitimate platforms will continuously check the user’s engagement by delivering pop-up messages.

To better understand the new breed of fraud within this rapidly-growing channel and how to effectively combat it, marketers need to be proactive, vigilant, and strategic in their efforts. The new ad fraud methods require new protection measures. That’s why we partner with Protected Media to leverage fraud prevention technology to catch fraud before it takes place and ad dollars are wasted. 

Check out the full article on Mediatel News and be sure to follow Digital Remedy on LinkedIn and Twitter for additional industry insights.