Slaying the Fraud Dragon: How We’re Fighting Back Against Digital Ad Waste
A $100 Billion Problem
We've nearly eliminated digital ad fraud, improved engagement, and restored our clients' faith in metrics. Read on to learn how.
You can cut off the dragon's head and exclude a fraudulent site to no avail — other fraudulent sites will pop up and continue syphoning your media dollars.
This revelation sparked a transformation in how we handle brand awareness campaigns. Spurred by our review of a client’s recent display campaign, we've decided to demonstrate the scale and significance of digital ad fraud — and share the secret of slaying the dragon.
Understanding the beast: What is digital ad fraud?
Digital ad fraud encompasses any deliberate activity that prevents the proper delivery of ads to the intended audience. From click farms to domain spoofing, the goal is simple: siphon ad dollars without delivering clicks that convert in a meaningful way for the advertiser.
Unfortunately, automated ad placements from major ad platforms often amplify the problem by prioritising activity over relevance. Their audience targeting tends to be broad as well. The result? Inflated click-through rates, hollow conversions, and zero ROI.
Our initial battle plan: Project NAGA ("Never Again Google Automation")
The issue with automated placements on the Google Display Network — or any ad exchange for that matter — is the sheer number of placements. There’s a near-unlimited number of websites vying to serve your ad and consume precious media dollars. If you’ve managed a brand awareness campaign, you’ll know how much time can be spent adding sites to an exclusion list.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that campaign settings (i.e. maximising clicks or conversions) typically works in favour of fraudulent websites.
As far back as 2020, we've seen a disturbing trend at our agency: higher engagement numbers masking low-value website traffic.
Determined to protect our clients' advertising investments, the NAGA initiative was born (shout out D&D players).
Weapon 1: Platform automated rules
In addition to consistently building on your placement exclusion list, a first line of defence is employing automated rules. These safeguards stop ads from being served before they have a chance to undermine your campaign. Are there domain extensions that should be excluded? Dynamic or category exclusions? Mobile app rules?
While not the silver bullet, it’s surprising how strong a first line of defence can be with a carefully crafted set of rules you have learned to be true. (Has anyone ever gotten a valuable conversion on a site whose domain ended with .xyz? We thought not.)
Weapon 2: Fraud detection software
Does it work? Yes.
Is it useful? Mostly.
When our agency used automated placements and compared it to campaigns protected with fraud detection software, reductions in ad fraud were considerable.
While the software boasted an 80% reduction in fraudulent ad traffic, we performed a manual review of placements to find the reduction rate was closer to 60%.
While a useful buffer, fraud detection software is not a complete solution. Think of it as the firewall — you still need to monitor what's getting through. Better, but not perfect.
Weapon 3: Intelligence gathering using third-party suppliers
Going beyond automation requires a carefully-curated managed placement list. This is ultimately the best way to minimise digital ad fraud within brand awareness campaigns.
The challenge is that thousands of websites are needed for campaigns to serve ad volume properly. Even with AI assistance, it’s a difficult and time-consuming list building process. A great option is using a third-party website aggregator (e.g. SimilarWeb), to uncover hidden gems — relevant, high-traffic sites where fraud is (or should be) minimal.
Accessing these third-party placement lists and building lists for a variety of industry segments comes at a significant investment. However, the potential ROI is similarly significant when compared to results from an automated placement campaign. This is especially true for niche campaigns, such as an agricultural campaign specifically targeting farmers.
Weapon 4: Self-curated managed placements – quality over quantity
Given the years of placement history at our agency’s disposal, we had Display campaign results from about 170,000 websites. #humblebrag
We grouped and reviewed these sites by clickthrough rate (CTR) and conversion rate, and cross-referenced by their Domain Authority scores.
We then eliminated sites based on:
This purge made it possible to perform a manual curation on the remaining list. The final list count: 2,500 high-quality placements, enough to serve a campaign spending thousands of dollars a month (considerable, in the context of an online brand awareness play).
In A/B testing against a campaign run with Google automation, we saw some interesting comparisons:
Based solely at the vanity quantitative results, any marketer would understandably let the platform handle the placements.
But when you consider qualitative results, any good marketer would opt for managed placements. Because they’d recognise that while you may have a reduced pool of placements to leverage, but you’ll reach more real customers. Isn’t that what marketing is about?
- Unrealistic CTRs or conversion rates
- For context: If your brand awareness campaign placements secure CTRs over 1%, you might want to double-check placements
- Low domain authority scores
- Domains that generally are not aligned with our customer’s base
- CTR was 230% higher with Google automation, but many sites secured unrealistic CTRs for a brand awareness campaign. Site quality was very poor, if not downright fraudulent.
- Conversion rates were 120% higher with Google automation, but again the vast majority of conversions came from suspicious sites and activity.
- Our managed placement list resulted in no fraud, genuine CTRs and conversions, and secured a lower CPC and view per user.
Tactical deployment: How Show and Tell applies these tools for clients
Each brand awareness campaign at The Show and Tell Agency leverages our managed placement list. It’s been years in the making, and our list still undergoes regular maintenance and additions.
In the case that placement automation is necessary (for example, when prospecting new websites), we believe automated rules and fraud detection software should definitely be used. There are too many sites designed to drain away your media dollars, and the problem is only getting worse.
Bid adjustments are also useful. If you know your customer is more likely to be on a trusted website, why not assign a positive bid adjustment?
Why this matters to our clients
The difference we've made in our clients’ brand awareness campaigns has been profound. We've nearly eliminated digital ad fraud, improved actual engagement, and restored faith in our metrics. Our transparent methodology also makes us a trusted partner in a murky marketplace.
Brand safety is non-negotiable. Fraud eats away at ROI and flat out wastes hard-fought marketing dollars. With our approach, clients know exactly where their ads appear and who’s seeing them. No fluff, no bots — just results.
Win the fight against fraud
Digital ad fraud isn’t going anywhere — especially since Google has no incentive to fix the problem. But with vigilance, tools, and strategy, we can stop giving media dollars to unscrupulous actors.
If you haven’t started building your placement list yet, it’s never too late to start.
And if you're tired of chasing meaningless metrics and want your budget to work harder, partner with us. Our team is ready to audit, optimise, and protect your campaigns.
Book a FREE discovery call with Show and Tell to talk to one of our digital ad placement experts.
