You’re Losing Advertising Dollars and You Don’t Even Know It

The number of advertisers who don’t know that they’re being affected by bots is huge. However, we all know that almost half of the Internet’s traffic is not human, many advertisers assume that they are not nefarious, which is absolutely wrong.

It is well known that advertising industry bears billion dollar loss due to counterfeit traffic. Despite the fact very few advertisers think that their sites are affected. Strange isn’t it!

A new research shows that only 37% advertisers know that non-human traffic causes negative effects on their campaigns. The number of publishers who know about the same is only 14%.

The reason of such unawareness is the thought “If I am not involved in such practices, I will stay unaffected”. I will call this nothing but an absurd thought. Because it’s like I will not get infected as my hands are clean, while the virus is in the air.

Another reason why advertisers don’t feel that they are affected by bots are they get desired ROI from their investment. But they don’t realize that this profit could be much bigger if bots didn’t embezzle their websites.

We have listed 3 things which you should know about:

1. How to know if it’s affecting you?

The chances are it is already affecting you. Approximately 22.7% of 2014’s web traffic was bad bots. Bots are often crafty and thus get to website easily. In fact they don’t need to be crafty or sophisticated as most of the time websites don’t have required tools to stop them. So they enter website from front door without any hesitation.

The first step towards blocking bots is recognizing it. And most of the advertisers don’t even know how to do it. So we have listed some ways using which you can protect yourself from bots:

• Reputable vendors and known sources should be your preference for buying.
• Set up JavaScript and it will alert you if there’s any bot.
• To save your valuable advertising dollars, track every single clicks and closely watch every dollar you spent so that you get a fair idea of what did and didn’t convert. Harmonize your campaigns and their performance on the most comminuted level possible.
• Videos can help you detect bad-bots. See if a video has been seen many times for a very short period of time.

2. Mobile’s newness is a double-edged sword

As we all know that nowadays people browse internet via mobile more than desktop. So advertisers have to shift to mobile which offers different challenges, such as difficulty of measurement and lack of viewability standards.

Mobile present challenges to cyber criminals as well. Since the screen is smaller and ads are less, they get a very little scope to work on. Therefore the criminals target ads with the highest cost per thousand (CPT).

Mobile is new (In terms of optimization and targeting ads) so it is difficult for marketers but more difficult for criminals. However, mobile lures fraud if the website is already indulging in some kind of fraud activity but those who play crystal clear and are aware from every aspect of it can stay safe and enjoy the ecstasy.

3. Bots are of many kinds.

Know one thing that not all bots are bad. The search engines namely Google, Yahoo, and Bing also refer their bots as bots and it is more than 36% of web traffic. The publishers know that the search engines and E-commerce bots should not be counted as a human traffic. But the bad bots is too hard to identify especially if that bot is highly sophisticated. The bad bots tend to imbalance the algorithm of the supply chain publishers offers to marketers. “No one will like to pay for the bots,” said a publisher and we are working towards it.

Summary

Whether from a technical problem or fraudulent traffic, advertisers lose a lot of money. If you don’t want to be the one, stick to reputable sources and vendors. Also gather as much as information as possible regarding your industry’s common threats and the signs of non-human traffic.  Industry giants are working towards developing a system to identify bad bots which are costing billions of dollars, but till then take precautions and stay informed.

If you are facing any issues with your marketing campaigns or have any other problems then feel free to email us at sales@agencyplatform.com or call (888) 736-0541 (Toll-Free). We will be more than happy to assist you.