As a marketer, you assume that when you buy digital ads, the ads are shown to humans visiting websites — in other words, the ads load when the pages load when humans visit.
But what if I told you that the vast majority of digital ads are manufactured out of thin air by using software – otherwise known as bots – to load webpages and cause ad impressions fraudulently?
Fake sites, fake traffic, fake ad impressions
Websites that don’t have a lot of natural traffic, and even websites that do have real human audiences, are tempted to buy traffic from shady sellers to drive up their own ad revenue.
The software bots used to generate fake traffic and impressions can easily trick fraud detection technologies and appear to be real. They can also be programmed to click on ads, view videos, stay on webpages longer to manipulate bounce rates.
All of these actions are used to manipulate analytics in order to cover up the fraud. Furthermore, various forms of fraud don’t even require large numbers of bots to hit webpages.
For example, what if webpages themselves redirect to other webpages in infinite loops? Typical bot detection technologies would not catch it.
Read More At The Original Article: techhq.com
