They’re Not Even Princes from Nigeria!

As Web-based advertising slowly displaces traditional media in terms of dollars spent, the big question is “who actually looks at those ads”? Sure, if you are searching for something you want to buy or a service you need, it’s pretty clear that search engines generate a lot of hits and resulting spends, but what about all those pre-roll ads, banners and links embedded in every form of social media, Webcasts, and other entertainment or edutainment sites? Is anybody really watching? What counts as a “hit” for which an ad payment is triggered, and exactly how well do those “placement specialists” – “experts” who distribute ads to the “right” (targeted) psychographics (people who share the same attitudes and perspectives) and demographics (objective population criteria) – actually follow their clients’ implementation orders?

Traditional broadcast networks have moved from a standard and simple “as watched” Nielson ratings system to a C3 (all viewing within 3 days) and are craving a C7 measurement (all viewing within 7 days). Not so good if what you are selling is time sensitive (like a movie opening). But on the Web, the fruits of deceptive measurements are staggeringly pronounced.

“By many estimates, more than half of online video ads are not seen, either because they are buried low on web pages or run in tiny, easily ignored video players on those pages, or run simultaneously with other ads. Vindico, an ad management platform company, deemed 57 percent of two billion video ads surveyed over two months to be ‘unviewable.’” New York Times, May 3^rd. What’s worse, placement vendors routinely violate their clients’ orders – how big the ad needs to be on the page, where it is placed vis-à-vis the video content it is supporting and even what psychographics and demographics it is actually reaching. Advertisers sometimes find their ads running on porn sites under some twisted definition of “demographic reach.”

Even the raw numbers of people reached is distorted. A one second “hit” might count, not to mention the fraudulent data that slides into measurement and tracking statistics. “[It] is starting to dawn on marketers that the online video ad system has a few booby traps. Let’s leave aside the reality that many consumers feel bombarded by video ads and actively tune them out. There is the issue of outright fraud, courtesy of bots that are programmed by hackers to rack up impressions. In early April, an ad tech company, TubeMogul, reported that it had discovered three new botnets that were generating 30 million fake video views a day, earning as much as $10 million a month. TubeMogul said the culprits were well concealed and likely operating overseas.

“But just as troubling to advertisers are practices that are perfectly legal… The crux of the problem is that the number of video ads that agencies and brands want to run far exceeds the amount of quality inventory — that is, well-placed video players on prestigious sites, like, say, Nationalgeographic.com. When the premium space fills up, media buyers start looking for video players in less coveted online real estate.” NY Times. The vendors themselves might not be aware of the false hits, and bill on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis measuring all the false “hits,” but when they knowingly deliver bad placement in mediocre Websites, it begins to smell even more like fraud.

But placement vendors, running out of options, often resort to blindly releasing ads into “black box” exchanges that promise to route the ads to the targeted demographics, but often wind up with some pretty nasty placements… and the advertisers just writes checks for stuff they really haven’t tracked and truly do not want. Even the vendors might not know the details, but that does not deter them from billing their clients. “If you’re a media buyer tasked with acquiring 10 million impressions for a brand campaign, you will probably try to spend as much as you can on great sites with video players that are large and high on the page. But what happens if those sites are full? You aim a little lower. You place the ad on less popular sites, or sites with video players that aren’t as well situated on the page. Maybe you allow some of those ads to run auto-play.

“Another option for media buyers is to enter the vast and complicated resale market, through what are called ad exchanges. Put simply, an ad exchange matches buyers and sellers — companies with ads to place and publishers with video players. Generally, these transactions happen in a matter of seconds, and without human intervention, thousands of times a day… When ads are sold, even the media buyer that was initially given the contract to place the ads may not know where they are running.

“Given the nearly $3 billion a year now spent on online video ads, and the 57 percent of them that are deemed unviewable, it’s safe to assume that American brands are now spending more than $1 billion a year on marketing that few if any people see.” NY Times. In the end, we are going to see advertisers demand greater accountability, but if you are in this space, relying on ad agencies to do the right thing, isn’t it time you engaged your own independent tracking experts and demand details on all the placements. The Internet is an amazing marketing tool, but the way some media placement agencies approach the subject, they really should consider operating from West Africa!

I’m Peter Dekom, and in an era of legal regulation and sophisticated tracking capabilities, the amount of out-and-out fraud in online marketing is astounding.